Michael "5000" Watts

Michael "5000" Watts ( – January 30, 2026) was an American DJ and entrepreneur who co-founded the record label Swishahouse. He is credited as one of the primary figures responsible for promoting Houston hip-hop—particularly its characteristic chopped and screwed style—to a national audience in the early 2000s.

Biography Watts was raised in the North Side of Houston. In his teenage years, he began work as a DJ who performed live sets and sold mixtapes, before parlaying this early independent career into a radio DJ role at 97.9 The Box. While working for this station in 1996, Watts began producing chopped and screwed mixtapes, inspired by the earlier work of DJ Screw.

In contrast to DJ Screw, who preferred to self-release his music on cassettes, Watts promoted his chopped and screwed music extensively on radio and the Internet. He also used CDs and software like Pro Tools to assemble higher-fidelity material. Watts' adoption of a style so heavily inspired by Screw, and the commercial success he attained with it, made him the target of resentment from Screw-affiliated artists from Houston's South Side. He began releasing screwed remixes of major-label albums through a deal with Universal Records, the first one being 8Ball & MJG's Space Age 4 Eva, and expanded his radio show to be syndicated across five Southern cities. In particular, Slim Thug, Paul Wall, Mike Jones, and Chamillionaire have all been named as Houston rappers who flourished through their connections to Watts and Swishahouse.

On January 30, 2026, Watts died at the age of 52 from a torsades de pointes. He was buried on February 16.