Interview – Lil John
With instantly recognisable gravel throated vocals, production techniques and several million album and single sales under their belts, Lil John and his East Side Boyz crew are a near household name throughout the world.
In the early days, Lil John had little idea that such huge success would was looming on the horizon. “You know, I’ve come a looong way man,” ‘John remarks. “When I was just djing I was just living in my mommas basement getting drunk every day. I didn’t have no idea what I was going to be in the future – then Germaine hired me to his label and I was an A&R guy for So So Def – and started doing that. While I was DJing I had a radio show and I used to take hophop a capela’s and put them over Jamaican beats and Jamaican acapella’s and put them over hip hop beats – and that kind of started me off producing.”
From working in A&R, to his weekly club and radio shows, it wasn’t too long until Lil John hooked up with the East Side Boyz and got into the studio, an event that would herald a release that was the first steps towards an entirely new subgenre of urban music – crunk. “Its funny you know – when we did the record, we didn’t try to be rappers, we don’t rap – we’re just straight crunk – we did the record just to get people crunked, and that when we started to calling what we did crunk music – nobody used the word. Nobody said they just wanna get people crunked before – and for us, it was all about getting people crunked – that’s how it got its name.”
Somewhere along the line, from releasing underground hits in Atlanta to world-wide fame, success hit, and Lil John was catapulted into the mainstream, where he now sits as a producer of some notoriety alongside the greats such as Dr Dre, Pharell and Timbaland – and his success is backed up by the notable awards he has received via both his peers and his fans. “My biggest highlight was to get a Grammy – and that was pretty fucking cool.” John says. “You know, it’s a certain kind of club you gotta be in to get a Grammy. Also to win the American music awards and the Billboard awards are pretty major – because that shows to me how much people love the music that we do.”
Beyond the hype, and beyond the success, Lil John presents an open faced and candor response to the laurels directed towards his talents. “I guess we just make good music. I try to always, just not half-step it, even mixing – I give it my best effort that I can and try to make it as tight as possible. I want people to say, whenever my name is attached to something, I want them to say that’s going to be some good shit – that’s quality.”
As he continues to release tracks that break both break new ground as well as refine the distinctive sounds of crunk itself, there seems to be an element of understanding in his voice of the constant need to push himself to better standards of production. “I’ve been doing this for so many years,” he sighs, “and with so much success it’s hard to just keep doing it. Once you get some monster hits, it gets hard because everybody wants you to be as good as your last hit, and everybody’s watching.” As such, with the stakes higher than ever before, the manifesto of crunk is simply laid out before us – no bullshit, and plenty of crazy drunk attitude. “We’re just going to come out there and just try to get everybody crunked man,” John laughs, “and that’s about it – does that sound good ?”
Tags: crunk, hip hop, lil john, so so def