Lil Jon |
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Wed. November 17.2004 12:00 AM EST |
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Lil Jon: All Crunked UpAtlanta's "Yeah!" man talks horny goat weed, strip club soundtracks, and the finest pimp chalices around. by C. Bottomley |
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(TVT Records) |
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Before Lil Jon hangs up the phone, he has a few things he wants VH1 to know about. First, his fourth album with the East Side Boyz, Crunk Juice, has just come out. Plus, if you go to his Web site, you can buy Lil Jon T-shirts and his new
Thanks to a little help from Dave Chappelle, Atlanta's Lil Jon is crafting an empire of crunk. For the uninitiated, crunk is the hood's heavy metal. Remember how Onyx used to break into moshing at their concerts? The onetime So So Def A&R man took the concept down South, building carpet-bomb grooves around aggressive slogans, and liberally adding his collection of catchphrases: "What!" "Yeah!" and "Ooh-kay!" The effect is as cathartic as Death Cab for Cutie and who knows, you might get a lap dance out of it, too. Lil Jon isn't keeping his can't-miss formula to himself. He's also been the power behind two of 2004's biggest hits - Usher's "Yeah!" and Ciara's "Goodies." He told VH1 about his high school days, "f*ck songs," and why crunk is the strippers' choice. VH1: Blender magazine just published your high school graduation picture. If you don't mind me saying, you don't look very crunk. Lil Jon: Everyone looks lame in their high school pictures. You can go back to my high school, ask people who had the wildest parties at their house, they're gonna say, "That n*gga right there in that picture." VH1: Were you a good student? Lil Jon: Back in those days I was just tryin' to find myself, so my grades sucked. I almost didn't graduate because I failed English. I had to go back and rewrite my essay - it was like 20 pages. All I did was rewrite the first two [pages] and got the rest of the pages and put em right in. I got lucky that the teacher didn't read that motherf*cker! VH1: So is Crunk Juice the same as the energy drink you're hawking? Lil Jon: People always ask me what's in my cup, and Crunk Juice is what's in my cup. Crunk Juice is a mixture of Crunk!!! energy drink and whatever liquor you like. So this album is a mixture of all kinds of different records that intoxicate you mentally. That's why we call it Crunk Juice. VH1: What does Crunk!!! taste like? Lil Jon: It has a distinct taste. There's no bad aftertaste like most energy drinks. People think it's a kind of fruity flavor. I can't really explain it. You've got to try it. We've got a lot of aphrodisiacs like horny goat weed, ginseng, ashwagandha ... a lot of natural products. It's an all-natural drink. VH1: How many pimp chalices do you have? Lil Jon: About ten right now. Each one is especially handmade when I call the lady. Debbie's her name. She makes every one by hand. VH1: Do you design your own cups? Lil Jon: Nah, she has the designs. I just tell her I might want a crown or I might want it all platinum or I might want it gold or platinum. But it's really her creativity. VH1: With ten different cups, when do you decide, OK, it's time for another one? Lil Jon: I need a new one when the cup starts gettin' a little too much use, like some of the platinum might be rubbin' off. Because I got to keep shinin'. I got to look nice. VH1: What track on Crunk Juice is the biggest departure for you as a producer and performer? Lil Jon: Nothin'! [Laughs] There's different flavors but it's still all us. We didn't do anythin' where you gonna listen to it and say, "What the hell is that? Where did they come from?" Everythin' still sounds true to Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz. Nothin' sounds out of place for us. VH1: Do you have a way of road-testing your music? Lil Jon: In Atlanta, the records break out of strip clubs, so I play the records for the DJs at the strip clubs and they give me a gauge. If I give it to em, a week or two after I give it to em, I call em. They'll tell me, "The girls are goin' crazy over this song, they fightin' over dancin' to this song. When I played this song, everybody in the club went crazy." The strip club is like the first test. VH1: Which song on the new album has gone over the best with the Atlanta stripping community? Lil Jon: There are three records. We got "Aww Skeet Skeet," we got "Lovers and Friends" with Usher and Luda and we've got the R. Kelly and Ludacris one, "In Da Club." Those three are like the biggest records out of all the different audiences that I play it for. "Lovers and Friends" is a good one for when you get a good table dancer and "Aw Skeet Skeet" for when they shake their ass good. VH1: Will "Lovers and Friends" make me start throwing bows? Lil Jon: Naw, it's like a ballad. On every album we got a "f*ck song" or a song you smoke weed to. So "Lovers and Friends" is like a "f*ck song" on the album. The song is about a guy dealin' with a girl. It's a slower song, and then the 808 is boomin' real hard, so when you're in the car, you listen to it with a chick, it sets the mood. VH1: When you were working at So So Def you turned down Ludacris. What were you thinking? Lil Jon: You got to understand, artists just don't come out and be the sh*t. Luda was a hot rapper, but he wasn't the Ludacris that he is today. He was still developin' his skills. When he brought me his demo tape, the record that was on the demo tape wasn't the record that he ended up usin' on the album. You have to hear the hit record to sign artists. I liked his talent, I liked his skills, but the records he had wasn't that incredible yet. That's sometimes what you need, for people not to pick up on you or you need to be dissed. Then you go back and work harder and then you become this great person. VH1: Have you ever been banned from a club for getting the crowd too rowdy? Lil Jon: We've been kicked out and all kind of stuff because people got too crazy. One time we was in this club and people got so rowdy, they started fightin' the police. Not security police. Another time, I was in the club, they kicked the sink off the wall and ran up the wall and kicked holes in the wall, like five feet up high in the wall. VH1: If I were in that situation, I'd be hiding under a table, but for you it's the sign of a great show. Lil Jon: Yeah, you get used to it. When you get into another level of consciousness, hey, that's how it goes. It's crunk. VH1: What music do you play when you want to get un-crunked? Lil Jon: Old school sh*t. Rick James, all that kind of sh*t. I listen to everythin' man, really. It just depends on the mood. I don't really listen to one CD. In my iTunes, I got 2000 songs, so I might just put that motherf*cker on shuffle under "old school" and listen to all those different old school records. VH1: How long can you keep doing crunk? Lil Jon: I'm not goin' to be 40 years old doin' this. I'm probably goin' to just focus on producin' in the next couple of years. Right now, since we got this new album done and in the can, I kind of want to sit back and produce my own artists. We got Trillville, we got Lil' Scrappy. We got Bo Hagon, E40, we got an R&B artist Oobie, we got a female rapper, Chyna White ... |
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