Fat Pat
Houston rapper Patrick Hawkins, an original Screwed Up Click member whose posthumous 1998 Wreckshop albums, led by “Tops Drop,” made him an enduring local icon.
Screwed Up Click roots
Patrick Hawkins was born in Houston on December 4, 1970. Known as Fat Pat, he was an original member of DJ Screw's Screwed Up Click and also belonged to the Dead End Alliance, a crew that included his older brother John Hawkins, the rapper Big Hawk. His freestyles on Screw's slowed-down tapes built his name across the city before he had released an album of his own. Big Hawk, Lil' Keke, Big Moe and E.S.G. were among the other original members of the click.
Wreckshop and a sudden death
Hawkins signed with Houston's Wreckshop Records and completed material for a solo debut. Before it came out, he was shot and killed on February 3, 1998, at an apartment on South Drive in Houston, where he had gone to collect an appearance fee from a promoter. He was 27 years old. The case remains unsolved, and the planned album release party became a wake attended by Scarface, Willie D, Lil' Keke, DJ Screw and others.
Posthumous albums
Wreckshop released “Ghetto Dreams” about six weeks after his death. It sold more than 20,000 copies in its first week and carried “Tops Drop,” which remains his signature song. A second Wreckshop album, “Throwed in da Game,” featuring “Holla at Cha Later,” followed later in 1998, and the label continued issuing compilations and Fat Pat tracks into the early 2000s.
Legacy
“Tops Drop” has endured as a Houston anthem, used by the University of Houston basketball program and by UFC heavyweight Derrick Lewis. Paul Wall named his son in Hawkins's memory. Big Hawk was also shot and killed in 2006, and the University of Houston Libraries have honored the brothers with the exhibit “Brothers in Rhyme.”
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