Home/Rappers/Male/Botany Boyz

Botany Boyz

The Botany Boyz were among the foundational groups of the Screwed Up Click, built a working label out of a Houston neighbourhood, and charted nationally without ever leaving the independent system.

Origins in Cloverland

The group takes its name from Botany Lane in the Cloverland area of Houston, where the members lived. They formed in 1994 and were part of the Screwed Up Click from the earliest period of DJ Screw's tape operation, which puts them at the origin of the whole Houston screw scene rather than adjacent to it.

The line-up

The current membership is B.G. Duke, C-Note, D-Red and Will-Lean. Past members include Big D-E-Z, Lil' 3rd, Lil' Head, Pap-Pap and B.G. Gator, who died in May 1999 and to whom the group's second album is dedicated.

Big Shot Records

They released their own records on their own label — Big Shot Records, later alongside Clover G and Plat-Num Productions — at a point when independent distribution in Houston meant physically moving product through local retail. Owning the label rather than signing to one is the defining decision of their career.

Album discography

Thought of Many Ways (1997) and Forever Botany, released on 15 February 2000, recorded at Top Notch Studio in Houston and produced by D-Red, Jhiame, Willo, James Hoover and J.P. Nitty, with C-Note as executive producer. It reached number ninety-nine on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart as Houston rap was beginning to register nationally.

Guests and collaborators

Forever Botany features Bun B, Billy Cook, Big T, Lil' Real, South Park Mexican and others — a snapshot of who was working in Houston at the turn of the century. They also appeared on Lil' Troy's platinum Sittin' Fat Down South with "Chop, Chop, Chop", produced by Bruce "Grim" Rhodes.

What they are known for musically

Slowed, heavy Southern production designed to be chopped, with multiple voices trading across long tracks. The records were built for the screw tapes as much as for retail, which is why they hold up better slowed down than at their original tempo.

Solo work and legacy

The members moved toward solo projects after 2000, with C-Note becoming the most commercially successful. The group's place in Houston history is structural rather than commercial: they were there at the start of the Click, they built their own infrastructure, and a substantial number of Houston artists passed through their orbit.

The screw tape connection

Their material was made for a distribution system that did not involve retail at all. DJ Screw's numbered tapes carried Houston reputations through the 1990s, and the Botany Boyz were on them from the beginning — which is why the group's standing inside the city has always exceeded anything its chart history would predict.

Cloverland and Botany Lane

Naming a group after a single street rather than a ward or a side of town is specific even by Houston standards, and it fits how the city's rap scene organised itself: by neighbourhood, then by block. Cloverland sits in south Houston near the areas that produced most of the Click.

B.G. Gator

Danta Smith, who recorded as B.G. Gator and was part of the Botany B.G.'s, died in May 1999. Forever Botany is dedicated to him and released nine months later. The Houston scene of that period lost an unusual number of its people young — Fat Pat in 1998, DJ Screw in 2000, Big Hawk in 2006 — and the records carry it.

The independent model

Owning Big Shot, Clover G and Plat-Num meant they kept the margin on everything they sold, and it meant the group outlasted the major-label cycle that swept through Houston and receded. Several of the artists who signed bigger deals in 2005 have less to show for it.

Frequently asked

Where is Botany Boyz from?

The group takes its name from Botany Lane in the Cloverland area of Houston, where the members lived.

What albums has Botany Boyz released?

Thought of Many Ways (1997) and Forever Botany , released on 15 February 2000, recorded at Top Notch Studio in Houston and produced by D-Red, Jhiame, Willo, James Hoover and J.P. Nitty, with C-Note as executive producer.

Who has Botany Boyz worked with?

Forever Botany features Bun B, Billy Cook, Big T, Lil' Real, South Park Mexican and others — a snapshot of who was working in Houston at the turn of the century. They also appeared on Lil' Troy's platinum Sittin' Fat Down South with "Chop, Chop, Chop", produced by Bruce "Grim" Rhodes.