I'm Throwed

I'm Throwed: Paul Wall and Jermaine Dupri Navigate Houston Slang and Southern Rap in 2007

"I'm Throwed" was released as a single from Paul Wall's second major-label studio album, Get Money, Stay True, released on September 25, 2007, via Asylum Records and Atlantic Records. The track featured Jermaine Dupri, the Atlanta producer and So So Def Records founder who had been one of the most commercially powerful figures in Southern rap since the mid-1990s. The collaboration brought together two distinct strands of Southern hip-hop, Houston's syrup-dipped, slow-rolling tradition and Atlanta's glossy, chart-friendly commercial rap, in a combination that aimed for crossover appeal without abandoning either artist's regional identity.

Paul Wall had emerged as one of Houston rap's most recognizable commercial representatives following the mainstream breakthrough of that city's sound in the mid-2000s. His 2005 debut album The People's Champ debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, an extraordinary achievement that reflected the mainstream's sudden appetite for Houston rap following the posthumous superstardom of DJ Screw and the commercial success of artists including Slim Thug, Mike Jones, and Chamillionaire. Wall's white identity within a predominantly Black genre drew media attention, but his credibility with Houston's rap community was unquestioned, built through years of collaboration with Swishahouse and genuine immersion in the local scene.

By 2007, when "I'm Throwed" was released, the initial wave of Houston rap's mainstream crossover had begun to recede. The song was released into a changed commercial environment, one in which T-Pain's Auto-Tune innovations and Kanye West's college-rap aesthetic had refocused mainstream hip-hop attention away from Houston's particular regional sound. Get Money, Stay True performed less dramatically than its predecessor, and "I'm Throwed" did not achieve the crossover impact that the label had hoped the Dupri collaboration might generate.

Jermaine Dupri's involvement brought his production signature to the track, combining the melodic pop instincts he had applied to artists including Mariah Carey, Usher, and Bow Wow with the harder sonic elements of Houston's rap tradition. Dupri had founded So So Def Recordings in 1993 and had produced some of the most commercially successful Southern rap and R&B of the 1990s and early 2000s, including work on Usher's career-defining album Confessions. His collaboration with Wall represented an attempt to leverage both artists' Southern credibility into a mainstream hit at a moment when both were navigating changing commercial conditions.

The title "I'm Throwed" drew directly from Houston slang vocabulary, with "throwed" being a term associated with the Houston rap scene that carried connotations of being deeply intoxicated on lean (codeine mixed with soda), of being in an altered mental state, and more broadly of being in a state of heightened feeling or altered perception. The term was central to the lexicon that Houston rap had exported to mainstream hip-hop through its mid-2000s commercial peak, and Wall's use of it as a song title was an assertion of regional identity and linguistic ownership.

Wall's lyrical approach throughout his career had emphasized his Houston roots, his relationships within the local rap scene, and the specific textures of Houston street culture, including the car culture, the jewelry culture, and the particular relationship to slow music that had produced the chopped-and-screwed tradition. "I'm Throwed" continued in this vein, with Wall deploying the vocabulary and references that his fanbase had come to expect while Dupri's production added elements designed to broaden the song's appeal beyond the Houston faithful.

The single received moderate radio play and music video attention, but did not break through to the level of Wall's biggest earlier singles, including "Sittin' Sidewayz" and the Mike Jones collaboration "Still Tippin'," which had been central to Houston rap's mainstream moment. The song's chart performance reflected the broader commercial challenges faced by regional rap styles when the mainstream moves on, a recurring dynamic in hip-hop history that Wall's career illustrated with particular clarity.

Despite its modest commercial impact, "I'm Throwed" remains a document of Houston rap's particular sonic and cultural identity at a moment of transition, a song that captured the specific vocabulary and feeling of a regional scene that had briefly commanded national attention and was working to maintain its integrity as that attention shifted elsewhere. Paul Wall's continued presence as an authentic voice for Houston rap made him a consistent figure in discussions of the city's musical legacy, and "I'm Throwed" contributed to that legacy as an honest expression of a specific cultural moment.