Houston is home to the most famous global name in music, but there is no hint of her in Peter Beste’s new portrait of the city’s hip-hop scene. You will not find the genteel part of town where Beyoncé Knowles was polished for stardom in the 260 pages of Houston Rap. Instead we patrol the streets of Fifth Ward, Third Ward and South Park, home to distinctly less wholesome dancefloor motivators, the likes of Pimp C, Ganksta N-I-P and DJ Screw. In the past 15 years, the Texas port has been hugely influential in the rap game, above all for producing beats that are slowed right down: ‘chopped and screwed’ in local parlance. Beste’s images drip with the heat and humidity that demand a lower tempo, but climate was not the only factor that led DJ Screw—pioneer of the super-slow sound—to pitch the bpms so low. In Houston hip-hop circles, codeine-promethazine cough syrup tends to be the tipple of choice, and fans of the ‘purple drank’ report that a slurp or two brings life to a virtual standstill. Beste’s achievement is to move beyond the standard tropes of the bad-boy rap picture. “I spent nine years on the project,” he says. “I grew up near these neighborhoods and I wanted to make a historical document of them before they were gentrified and gone forever. Some of these guys were local heroes to me, but it took time to gain their friendship and trust. Then I could get behind the tough-guy facade.” The world of the Houston rhyme-spitter that Beste has documented is an often cozily domestic world of puppy-dogs, trophy cabinets and cornflakes for breakfast that seems a million miles from the cliche of thugs in the lap-dancing joint. Not that he misses out on the booty-shaking aspect of an evening spent, for example, at the MLK Nite Club, a down-home kind of spot, where the sign outside reads “(b.y.o.b.).”