Georgia made a big noise at the DNC last night during the roll call vote thanks to Lil Jon. The Atlanta native briefly turned the convention into a crunk party, performing songs like his 2013 anthem “Turn Down for What” and interpolating his hit song “Get Low.”
“VP Harris to the Walz,” he chanted, remixing his lyrics “to the windows to the walls.”
The viral moment added to the list of highlights in the crunkmeister’s extensive career.
In the 1990s, the rapper, producer and DJ began his career as the frontman for Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz. The group dropped songs like “Who U Wit?,” “I Don’t Give A …,” and “Get Low,” which peaked at no. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. With the East Side Boyz, Lil Jon swiftly built a reputation for making rowdy and raunchy songs that were known for their defiant spirit and loud chants — further popularizing the crunk subgenre.
He followed that success with 2004′s Grammy-winning “Yeah!,” which he cowrote and recorded with Usher and Ludacris. The song topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 12 consecutive weeks, becoming the longest-running number one single in 2004. “Yeah!” masterfully mixed the worlds of crunk and R&B, while still having the Atlanta flair.
But Usher didn’t want to do it: “I thought it sounded too ‘Michael’,” Usher told the AJC’s Sonia Murray in 2005. Murray went on to note that “in fact, it does sound a bit like Michael Jackson — Michael at his best, all confidence and soul, updated with Lil Jon’s energetic “crunk” sound and the added bonus of Ludacris’ wickedly suggestive rap verse.”
“It was everything hot about Atlanta right now,” Ludacris told the AJC at the time.
Lil Jon reunited with Usher to perform the song at this year’s record-breaking Super Bowl Halftime Show. The 52-year-old also performed the song that energized the DNC crowd last night, “Turn Down for What.” Released at the end of 2013, the song would rise to No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Lil Jon’s ninth Top 10 hit. Rolling Stone named it the second best song of 2014 and called it “the perfect protest banger for a generation fed up with everything.”
Back in 2014, former first lady Michelle Obama promoted healthy eating — and turnips — with an official White House Vine video that used “Turn Down for What.”
But this year’s performance wasn’t the first time Lil Jon graced football fans with his crunk antics. In 2019, he was among the artists who took the stage during the Super Bowl Music Fest in Atlanta. He shared the stage with Atlanta hip-hop heavyweights like Ludacris, Migos, Metro Boomin, Lil Yachty and Lil Baby.
Lil Jon has also found success outside of music. In 2011, he appeared on “The Celebrity Apprentice,” hosted by a pre-White House Donald Trump, and finished third. He later appeared in the all-star version of the series.
“The whole experience showed me how tough I am and what I’m really made of,” Lil Jon told the AJC’s Melissa Ruggieri at the time. “The show pushes your limits. I say making an album is mentally grueling, but you can control that process to an extent. You can’t really get up during the show and say, ‘I don’t want to do the task today.’”
He currently stars in the HGTV home renovation series “Lil Jon Wants to Do What?,” where he teams with interior designer Anitra Mecadon to transform clients’ spaces.
In May, the 52-year-old traded his crunk anthems for a meditation album, “Manifest Abundance: Affirmations for Personal Growth.”
