Eventually, Lil Jon decided to share his greatness with those of us not privileged enough to hang at his house. In 1996, he teamed up with Big Sam and Lil Ho, also known as The East Side Boyz. Really, he hired them on as bodyguards and was simply nice enough to put their pictures on the front of his albums. Speaking of which, his musical compilations were a work of genius the likes of which had not seen since George Gershwin in the 1920s. Hip hop was changed forever when Lil Jon single-handedly invented the subgenre "crunk." The key tenets of crunk were not killing cops or having all the "fly honeys," but partying hard and sticking it to those who would disrupt the good times.
Apparently these virtues resonated with the listening public, because Jon's two main albums, Kings of Crunk and Crunk Juice, both went double platinum in the United States. Jon's success propelled him to produce remixes of other musicians' songs. In addition, his in-your-face voice was sampled in dozens of hip hop tracks, instantly tripling their awesomeness. His screams of "what?", "yeah!", and "OK!" were unprecedented snapshots of intensity.
It all came to a head in 2004 with Usher's "Yeah!" Lil Jon basically dominated this song, which even featured a rare appearance of his lyrical abilities. The song reached #1 on bilboard charts worldwide, and is even rumored to have convinced members of the IRA to end their struggle for independence. Even extremist Islamic leaders admitted on Al-Jazeera TV, "Lil Jon does put the crunk into this particular track. Wait, don't quote me on that! Allah hates Western music!"
On a random side note, Lil Jon is one of the only four celebrities to avoid being punk'd by Ashton Kutcher. When some "customs agents" told him his plane to Las Vegas was actually heading for Ecuador, he recognized them from previous episodes and asked Kutcher to come out. Later, he said, "You can't punk the king of crunk." Only Lil Jon could say this with any credibility. I love that he actually made that quote rhyme in real time.
I'm going to end this article with a list of songs Lil Jon made possible. "Get Low," "Get Crunk," "What U Goin' Do," "Real...Roll Call," and, of course "Let's Go," his classic remix of Ozzy Ozbourne's "Crazy Train." I don't know what society would be like without these world-changing tracks, and I shudder whenever I attempt to imagine such a thing. In conclusion, I wrote this entire article while listening to "Let's Go" on a continuous loop for at least thirty minutes.