Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz

Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz earned their reputation as the leading force in crunk music, launching the Dirty South variant of the style that took root in Atlanta at the dawn of the 2000s. Their frontman Lil Jon stood out as a magnetic rapper whose booming voice and signature exclamations captured the extravagant, high-energy party vibe of that period. Beyond his group work, he built a parallel career as a featured artist, producer, and media personality, supplying the vocal spark that propelled his own track “Get Low,” Usher’s “Yeah!,” and the DJ Snake EDM single “Turn Down for What?” onto the upper reaches of the charts.

The Atlanta collective came together in the middle of the 1990s. Lil Jon had already been spinning records at local clubs and throwing parties when an encounter with Jermaine Dupri led to an A&R position at the So So Def imprint. Between 1993 and 2000 he earned notice for his club-oriented remix productions. Soon afterward he assembled Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz, adding Big Sam and Lil Bo to the lineup.

Mirror Image Records, an Atlanta concern then affiliated with Ichiban, signed the group chiefly to highlight Lil Jon’s beats. The label issued the single “Who U Wit?” and the album Get Crunk, Who U Wit: Da Album in 1997, followed by the 1998 track “Shawty Freak a Lil Sumtin’.” Momentum from the first single opened doors for outside production jobs, so the next East Side Boyz project, We Still Crunk, did not surface until 2000, this time on the independent BME label. A move to TVT brought the 2001 release Put Yo Hood Up, which recycled earlier cuts such as “Who U Wit?” and “I Like Dem Girlz” while introducing “Bia’ Bia’,” the first single to reach a national audience thanks to appearances by Ludacris and Too Short.

Kings of Crunk arrived in 2002 behind the single “I Don’t Give a @#&%” and quickly built on that breakthrough, yielding the Top Five smash “Get Low.” The Ying Yang Twins collaboration dominated clubs throughout 2003; the year-end Part II EP added dancehall and merengue versions plus extra tracks. Lil Jon’s sound blanketed urban radio the following year with productions that included “Salt Shaker” for the Ying Yang Twins, Ciara’s “Goodies,” Usher’s “Yeah!,” Petey Pablo’s “Freek-a-Leek,” Young Buck’s “Shorty Wanna Ride,” YoungBloodZ’s “Damn!,” Trick Daddy’s “Let’s Go,” Pitbull’s “Culo,” Lil Scrappy’s “Head Bussa,” Trillville’s “Neva Eva,” and Too Short’s “Shake That Monkey.” Around the same time comedian Dave Chappelle devoted segments of The Chappelle Show to lampooning Lil Jon’s trademark “yeaaah!” and “whaaat!?” interjections.

Late 2004 saw the Lil Scrappy-assisted single “What U Gon’ Do” set the stage for Crunk Juice, an album crowded with guest appearances. “Friends & Lovers,” featuring Usher and Ludacris, climbed to the Top Three of the Billboard Hot 100. Afterward Lil Jon paused his own releases while TVT navigated bankruptcy proceedings, yet he kept supplying hits for other artists: T.I.’s “I’m a King” (2005), Amerie’s “Touch” (2005), Brooke Valentine’s “Girlfight” (2005), Nivea’s “Okay” (2005), YoungBloodZ’s “Presidential” (2006), E-40’s “U and Dat” (2006), Lil Scrappy’s “Gangsta Gangsta” (2006), and Pitbull’s “Dime/Tell Me” (2006). His solo return came with 2010’s Crunk Rock. The next year he appeared on Celebrity Apprentice, finishing second to country artist John Rich. In 2014 he merged crunk with trap and electro elements on the quintuple-platinum “Turn Down for What?,” a Top Five dance-chart entry recorded with DJ Snake. He maintained momentum across hip-hop and electronic circles with later singles such as “My Cutie Pie” (with T-Pain, Problem, and Snoop Dogg), “Live the Night” (with W&W and Hardwell), “Take It Off” (with Yandel and Becky G), and the Steve Aoki collaboration “Supernova (Interstellar).” In 2017 he revisited the spirit of “Turn Down for What?” on the aggressive “In the Pit” alongside Skellism and Terror Bass. While awaiting a new full-length, he kept releasing material, among them the Offset and 2 Chainz track “Alive” and the tongue-in-cheek Christmas single “All I Really Want for Christmas” (featuring the Kool-Aid mascot) in 2018. The following year he joined Shaquille O’Neal on NGHTMRE’s dubstep cut “Bang,” and he also dropped his own “Ain’t No Tellin’” (featuring Mac Dre) and “Taco Tuesday.”