Davis released over 200 mixtapes and was recognized as an innovator mostly on a regional level until his death of codeine overdose in 2000. His legacy was discovered by a wider audience around 2005, and has gone on to influence a wide variety of artists.\n', '

Robert Earl Davis, Jr. was born in Smithville, Texas. His father, Robert Earl Davis Sr., was a long-haul truck driver based in Houston. His mother Ida May Deary (who had a young daughter from a previous marriage), came to the area to be with her mother when her son was born in 1971. She returned to Houston, but the marriage was floundering; soon it would be over, and she and her kids moved to Los Angeles for a couple of years, then back to Houston, and returned to Smithville in 1980 when Davis was age nine.\n', '

When young, DJ Screw had aspirations of being a truck driver like his father, but seeing the 1984 hit break dancing movie Breakin\' and discovering his mother\'s turntable attracted him to music. His admiration of classical music drove him to resume piano lessons. After seven years of practice, he was able to play works like Chopin\'s Etude in C major by ear. His musical interest shifted as he took his mother\'s B.B. King and Johnnie Taylor records and scratched them on the turntable the way DJs did, slowing the spinning disc and then allowing it to speed back up, playing with sound.\n', '

Return to DJ Screw Autograph Profile