Space City with a chopped and screwed soundtrack
Houston was founded in 1836 by two land speculators who bought a stretch of mosquito-ridden bayou and named it after Sam Houston, the general fresh off his victory at San Jacinto, betting that the association alone would draw settlers. It worked. In 1969 the city's name entered history permanently when Neil Armstrong radioed "Houston" as the first word spoken from the lunar surface. Two decades later DJ Screw began slowing records down in his bedroom until the vocals dragged and the beat crawled, selling the tapes out of his house — the chopped and screwed sound became Houston's other great export and permanently changed Southern rap. The Astrodome opened in 1965 as the world's first domed, air-conditioned stadium, and forced the invention of artificial turf when grass would not grow under the roof. The city still has no formal zoning code.
