An Ode to Moonlight's Chopped and Screwed Score

The last time I saw Barry Jenkins’ soulful epic Moonlight was when it debuted in 2016. I was in my mid-20s, around the same age as protagonist Chiron during the film’s third act, and I was taken by its gorgeous cinematography, performances, and Chiron’s tricked-out Chevy Impala. Its themes—of identity, queerness, and Black masculinity as defined by life in the South—weren’t lost on me, but since I was in the haze of young adulthood myself, they didn’t hit me quite as hard as they could’ve. That all changed when I watched it again last week, during a one-night-only screening in IMAX, and realized that everything about Moonlight, especially the quiet devastation of its ending, had become more potent over time. And part of that was because of my deeper appreciation for the film’s use of Texas chopped and screwed music. 

By Moonlight’s final third, Chiron—having long ago rechristened himself as “Black”—is a world removed from who he once was. The meek and insecure teenager of the movie’s second act has been replaced by a jacked drug-dealing alpha male, his gold fronts gleaming in the Florida sun. This is unsubtly acknowledged while Chiron drives through the streets of Miami bumping the slowed-down remix of Wisconsin rapper Jidenna’s 2015 hit “Classic Man,” a song that, at the time, was so inescapable as to be grating. Composer Nicholas Britell’s choice to chop and screw the song not only feels regionally accurate (we’re not in Texas, but still!), it emphasizes the lyrics of the hook, which speak directly to the persona Chiron’s created for himself, and which slowly breaks down as he opens himself back up to his lover Kevin: “You could be me if you look this clean/I’m a classic man.” A little on the nose narratively, but with that groove blasting out the car radio, it’s hard to care.

When I came home from the theater and did my customary post-film deep dive, I discovered that the chopping and screwing—or at least, the artful slowing down—of music didn’t stop there. In a piece for the Cornell Daily Sun, writer Jack Jones noted that Britell and director Barry Jenkins had also applied the principles of Texas screw to a piano and violin refrain that appears throughout the film. The crucial moment comes near the end of the second act, where Kevin, after having shared a tender sexual moment with Chiron the night before, is egged into beating his lover senseless by other kids, unaware of the duo’s relationship. It’s an uncomfortable scene on its own, but I hadn’t realized its score was a slowed-down version of the refrain we’d heard through the whole movie up to that point, the piano chords landing more like drum strikes or, in this case, body blows. 

The chopped-and-screwed score amplified the moment’s intensity, and I thought about it long after I left the screening. Moonlight’s sound design goes out of its way to emphasize Chiron’s loneliness, fear, and longing, whether he’s dissociating during conversations or tripping over his words on the phone, an unexpected call causing Black to revert back to his old self. While I enjoyed the “Classic Man” remix on a different level, the score of the schoolyard fight scene emphasized the movie’s quiet horrors. There’s something to that tug-of-war, the jovial and blunt “Classic Man” drop contrasting a musical inversion so subtle you’re almost guaranteed to miss it the first time—just another reason why Moonlight’s shades of blue and black only get richer with age.