DeMo Sherman: My sister was trying to get me to meet him. She kept begging me to meet the man, and I’m like, “I don’t want to meet this dude. I don’t know him.”
I was helping her move, and I heard the music she was playing with some real nice mixing going on. I kept looking at the speakers playing because it was a stereo, and [the music] was dragging so slow. I was like, “What’s wrong with your stereo?” She said, “The guy I want you to meet—that’s his style.”
Man, when I met him, we connected right away because I was a rapper, but I was a DJ, too. I drove up, and he was at the end of the driveway. He was like, “You DeMo?” and I was like, “You Screw?” and we both just bust out laughing because my sister was bugging us to meet. We talked about the rap scene in Houston, how it is in Texas, who we liked in rap, and who we didn’t like. We talked for hours that night.
The Texas Renaissance Festival: Where Magic Becomes Memories
How was the music scene at the time of the mixtape?
I came up as a rapper. From day one, when I heard the Sugar Hill Gang, I started rapping. So, when hip-hop hit in the ’80s, I was on time. Then, the late ’80s and the early ’90s came, and it wasn’t cool to rap no more. The people that were rapping were K-Rino, me, and all of the Houston OGs—we rap. We had the Geto Boys. We had Street Military. It was mainly underground.
How did the plans come together on your birthday?
Around two weeks before, I made a tape, Dancing Candy. I’ve made a lot of Screw tapes, and every tape used to sound the same to me. Just: shout-out, rapping, rapping, rapping, flowing, flowing, flowing—tape over. And, you know, I’m a rapper. I make records. I make songs, so I like a little bit more structure. It’s really about the music.
