Fat Pat dies

Why it matters

Patrick Hawkins, who recorded as Fat Pat in DJ Screw's Screwed Up Click, was shot to death in Houston on February 3, 1998. He was 27. He had been picking up payment for a performance at the time of the shooting. The case has never been fully resolved. Fat Pat is one of the foundational Houston rap voices of the Screwed Up Click era. The voice was deep, deliberate, drawled in a way that anchored the chopped-and-screwed aesthetic; even before Screw chopped Pat's records down to half-speed they already had the slow, conversational, almost gospel feel of the Houston sound. The Screwed Up Click roster (Pat, his brother Big Hawk, ESG, Lil Keke, Big Moe, Botany Boyz) was the central node of late-90s Houston rap. Pat's solo work (Ghetto Dreams, 1998) was released two months after his death and went gold without him. His brother Big Hawk would be killed eight years later in 2006. You should hear Pat's work on the Screwtapes. The voice is the part. The Houston scene has been carrying his absence for almost three decades now.