Randolph Palmer Narrator: They’re loud, vivid, brightly colored, and impossible to overlook. At a glance, they could appear like simple lowriders. However, it’s their iconic elbow wheels, excessive-gloss sweet paint, and over-the-pinnacle stereo systems that set them aside in the global of custom vehicles. These are slabs. Said to be an acronym for slow, loud, and bangin’, slabs are a kind of modified automobile that originated inside the city of Houston. Theirs can be traced to the over-extravagant rides featured in 1970s blaxploitation films and some mainstream movieso. For the ones trying to learn extra approximate slabs, there’s the most effective character to speak to – Houston local and slab aficionado Langston Wilkins.
Langston Wilkins: I’m a folklorist, ethnomusicologist, and researcher, and I’ve been discovering and writing about slab culture for the past several years. Slabs emerged in Houston, Texas’ African American groups in the mid-Nineteen Eighties. More mainly, it appeared in the streets. This was the mid-eighties, all through the crack era. Some younger guys were getting especially rich promoting capsules, and they used slabs to expose their achievements while also using an inventive outlet. But in the early Nineteen Nineties, slabs moved out of that experience and became a part of the neighborhood hip-hop lifestyle. And it’s while the slab scene in reality multiplied and grew.
Langston: A slab is usually an older, large-bodied American sedan – Cadillac, Lincoln, Oldsmobile, etc. It is decorated or outfitted with numerous body additions, the first and most essential being the edges called “swingers” or “elbows.” Those are those cone-like rims that poke out quite a ways. On the trunk, you’ve got what is known as a “5th wheel,” a rim cut in half and enclosed in a fiberglass casing. Also, explosive stereo systems rattle or shake the automobile and shake the surroundings while paying attention to rap tracks. And in the trunk, you regularly have what is known as ‘trunk presentations,’ which are neon or, on occasion, glass signs that carry particular messages to their groups.
Narrator: With the sort of prominent appearance, overt fashion, and capacity for expression, it’s no surprise Houston’s huge collection of hip-hop artists has embraced slab subculture. Langston: slabs are the visual detail of Houston’s hip-hop lifestyle. It’s like graffiti or fashion in other scenes. Slabs are a form of cloth subculture that light up the local hip-hop communities’ values, attitudes, and ideas. I think the ‘Mwanga’ separates slabs from different custom automobile cultures. That’s why they may be pointed out a lot. But past that, I might say the bigger hip-hop community, the Houston hip-hop community, makes Slabs unique. Houston hip-hop is marked through a gradual sound. It’s a psychedelic track. It’s an atmospheric tune. And we see all of these characteristics in slab culture. Slabs are supposed to be pushed sincerely, really slowly. Slab drivers generally weave inside and outside of lanes while driving their automobiles. So, a slab isn’t only a sort of vehicle. It’s a whole enjoy, and it’s a whole culture, so it’s virtually unique.
