by Ifè Oshun

Before becoming the undisputed King Of Crunk, Atlanta-based artist/producer, Lil Jon, rattled clubs as a DJ. In 1993, Jermaine Dupri snatched him for So So Def Records, where Jon served as the executive vice president of A&R until 2000. All the while, Jon produced his own records with his partners the Eastside Boyz, hosted a radio show at V103, and remixed tracks for major Atlanta-area artists such as Too Short, Xscape, Total, and Usher. His 2002 double platinum-plus album, Kings Of Crunk, has been on the charts for an astonishing two years and produced the monster crossover hit “Get Low.” Featuring the hot-hot-hot “to the window to the wall” hook, that track introduced the rest of the world to Crunk and made Lil Jon a superstar. His producer midas touch also helped take Usher’s “Yeah” into the pop single stratosphere.

“It seems like we’re jumping 200 feet at a time,” Lil Jon says of his group’s progression since 1996’s debut album Who U With, Get Crunk: Da Album. “Every album is so much better than the last album. We’re doing the same thing that we did from the beginning. We’re just tightening it up more and more and more.”

After collaborating on hits with Usher, Ying Yang Twins and a host of others since the release of Kings..., Lil Jon of Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz, has become a household name, thanks in part to Dave Chapelle's hilarious parody of him on the former's comedy sketch show, and mostly to his creation of what has become a new sub-genre of music called Crunk.

I recently spoke to Lil Jon about the new album, his first musical love, and why Crunk is not Hip-hop.

IO: Ok, in terms of breaking boundaries and creating a new genre in hip-hop, is that what you're doing? What do you call hip-hop?

LJ: In the south we look at hip-hop as New York music. We look at rap music as encompassing everything. Hip-hop was a term that was mainly used by New York cats. So we kind of look at hip-hop as, you know, like Jay-Z. That's hip-hop to us. Then you got Crunk, like what we do. You got west coast, you got New Orleans bounce, you got all kind of different stuff, you got bass music. But that's how we kind of look at it. But hip-hop is really the main thing and all the little umbrellas are underneath it. But that's just how being brought up in the South kind of scorned by New York rappers and New York people...

IO: The South is ruling now...

LJ: That's the thing about Southern rap artists. We did never have to be true to nothing, because we were already the step children. We just did what we did. Outkast is Outkast. They wasn't trying to be like nobody. They came out and did their own thing and made the world learn. Lil Jon and the Eastside Boys, we don't even rap. We don't consider ourselves rappers, but we came out and made people love us. Cuz we weren't trying to be true to this and true to that and tampering with the artform and all that bullshit. Rap music and hip-hop came from people expressing themselves, so how you gonna tell somebody how to express theirselves?

IO: The foundation of hip-hop is experimentation.

LJ: Yeah! That's why I think crunk music is doing so well cuz we weren't trying to be true to nothing. Only thing we trying to be true to is the people at the clubs. In Atlanta, it's all about the clubs. Everything revolves around the club and if your record ain't hot in the club don't nobody wanna hear that shit. So you have to control the clubs. So that's the only thing we can really say we a slave to - being the one to control the clubs, making people go crazy in the clubs and that's why our music is doing well, because you can't deny the energy of the records that we are making.

IO: Who are some of the artists who inspire you?

LJ: One of my favorite artists of all time is Ice Cube. I grew up on everything from Big Daddy Kane to Run DMC to Luke and the 2Live Crew. Shit everything. Bob Marley, Ray Charles, everybody.

The first music I fell in love with was early hip-hop and then bass was the main music in Atlanta. Then after bass, I started DJing the dancehall a little bit. When I was growing up I used to skateboard so I listened to a lot of punk rock groups and all of that shit. I'm very musically diversified.