Remembering George Floyd’s Life and Legacy in the Houston Hip-Hop Scene
By the time he reached his twenties, George Floyd was already a legend on the streets of Third Ward, a historically Black and culturally rich enclave on the south side of Houston, Texas. A two-sport athlete at Jack Yates High School, he was the generous giant of a tight end who helped lead his team to a state championship game in 1992. At six and a half feet tall, Floyd was unmistakable and easily earned the nickname of “Big Floyd.” In the Cuney Homes, a dormitory-style housing project where Floyd grew up, everyone knew him.
They also knew DJ Screw, whose slowed-down mixtapes warped space and time, and made neighborhood stars out of the rappers who visited him. In 1994, when Floyd was home from South Florida Community College, he and a friend stopped by the visionary DJ’s house. In front of Screw, Floyd grabbed the mic and started rapping, confidently rattling off bars to the room’s delight. Before long, that visit would lead Big Floyd into his next career path, local rap star and member of the influential Screwed Up Click. Floyd gravitated towards freestyle rapping by looking at the world around him and imagining something different.
The world as it stands now is not the one Floyd imagined while riding through Houston on muggy summer days. The 46-year-old’s death while in the custody of four Minneapolis police officers has sparked global protests calling for an end to police brutality. One of the officers, Derek Chauvin, has been charged with second-degree murder in Floyd’s death. Three other officers, Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng, and Tou Thao, were charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder and manslaughter.
At a hometown protest in Floyd’s honor on June 2, an estimated 60,000 people took to the streets of downtown Houston. The mayor spoke in Floyd’s honor at City Hall, as did religious leaders and artists including Bun B, who helped organize the protest. Thousands of signs mentioned Floyd’s name, and his old flows with the Screwed Up Click streamed out of portable speakers. “He meant a lot, he was the OG to the community,” Junebug, a Third Ward native, told me. “He was gonna stay on you to make sure you’re staying positive.”
In total, Floyd appeared on six Screw tapes before the DJ passed away in 2000, the bulk of them arriving between 1996 and 1998. He was a featured player even as Screw pulled in Lil Keke, Big Pokey, Big Moe, and Fat Pat, acts who would go on to regional and in some cases, national fame. As is the custom within the Click, getting a birthday tape or a personal tape means you’re a made man; Big Floyd wound up with both.
On his birthday tape, 1997’s Chapter 007: Ballin In Da Mall, Floyd and Screw laugh about getting shoes from a local Foot Action ahead of release and loudly joke, “This the gettin’ fired tape!” Half of the tape is geared toward bicoastal rap favorites and wanton freestyles while intoxicated. On the lengthy rip of Tela’s “Tired of Ballin,’” Big Floyd comes in at the 14-minute mark and barely allows anyone else to enter his orbit. “Catch me on the TV, nationwide I went/Me and MJG and we both gettin’ bent… Big Floyd runnin’ the industry, wineberry over gold.”
There’s a technical skill within loose freestyling, especially the natural southside Houston style of this era. There’s little to no constraint, and the artform is largely comprised of self-boasts, simple yet effective wordplay that makes daily exploits seem comparable to fables of the past. It is a freedom that creates friendships with the passage of a secret language belonging to one culture and region. And Floyd was a natural, able to control his voice as one would with a jab in the boxing ring. “Any song I made, you hear who taught me: George ‘Big Floyd,’” said rapper Cal Wayne, who considered Floyd a big brother and mentor.
Floyd’s personal tape, 1998’s Chapter 068: Tre World, is a tour of Southern hip-hop that doubles as a tribute to Fat Pat, who was tragically gunned down earlier that year. Early on in the tape, Floyd uses an interlude to offer words of peace and unity: “H-Town, watch us come up, everybody shinin’. You need one more chance in the game to get right,” he says over a lurching instrumental of the Notorious B.I.G.’s “One More Chance.” “Everybody gotta stick together, mane, know what I’m sayin? All this motherfuckin’ hatin’ man, people coming up dead man. Let a nigga shine. That’s for real.”
The tape highlights Floyd’s preferred choices, with a who’s who of Southern rap royalty, a little West Coast love, and plenty of space for the Screwed Up Click. Floyd only raps once, on the tape’s closer where he’s in such a zone that he barely pauses to realize what’s happening. In one passage that moves from paranoia to positivity in 60 seconds flat, Floyd chronicles personal setbacks, dope game traps, and sugar mamas who drive candy-coated pink Hondas, at one point proclaiming that he’d drive to Philly to hang with Allen Iverson. It all builds to a deliberate pause and realization: stay focused. He was young, joyful, and in his element as a neighborhood superstar who could do seemingly everything.
Every chance he got, Floyd put the name of Third Ward first. He proudly rattled off areas and nicknames on a freestyle atop AZ’s “Sugar Hill,” from 1998’s Chapter 319: Floyd & Screw. Having the final say (or close to it) on a Screw tape had become his calling. After Screw died in 2000, Floyd appeared on local group Presidential Playas’ album Block Party, but he mostly shifted his mindset from rapping to mentoring. He never stopped supporting local artists, encouraging the next generation of Third Ward talent—like OMB Bloodbath and Cal Wayne—with his wisdom and texts. Even after he left for Minnesota in order to find work, Floyd remained in contact with the Houston rap community until days before his death.
There is one Floyd flow in particular that has taken on new resonance in the days since his death: his showcase verse from “Sittin’ on Top of the World,” off Screw’s Chapter 324: Dusk 2 Dawn tape. Originally belonging to Da Brat, the song is supposed to be her taunt to everyone while gliding over an unmistakable guitar sample of Rick James’ “Mary Jane.” Slowed down to a narcotized crawl by Screw, it turns into something massive. Floyd introduces himself last and reduces the instrumental to a smolder—an effortless display of self-affirmation and glory, with witty humor mixed in. The “ghetto” of Third Ward, his Blackness and Screw are his centers, nothing else matters. The moment leaves the man who’s supposed to jump on the mic next speechless.
George Floyd joins his friends H.A.W.K., Mr. 3-2, Gator, Big Steve, Big Mello, Macc Grace, Fat Pat, Big Moe, and DJ Screw in the roll call of fallen Soldiers United for Cash, whose names will forever be committed to memory. Screw prophesied that his sound would change the world. Big Floyd, in the cruelest of ways, did the same. His death turned the world, already in the throes of a global pandemic, into a far more aware one. And his legacy evolves with each passing moment.
Originally Appeared on Pitchfork
