Pump up the energy

Lil JON slumps into a chair in the lobby of a swank Los Angeles hotel.

After missing his flight, the Atlanta-based rapper-producer has just driven from Las Vegas and has less than an hour on this January afternoon before he has to leave with rap duo Ying Yang Twins to perform on “The Late Late Show With Craig Kilborn.” The group’s ultra-rowdy hit, “Salt Shaker,” is one of the four current Billboard Top 100 singles Jon produced and appears on.

Even though Jon, dressed in black jeans and a sweatshirt and sporting dark sunglasses, has pioneered “crunk,” a type of hip-hop music known for its riotous, energetic style, he is noticeably placid. Maybe it’s because he’s been on the road nonstop for the last half-decade, or so tirelessly promoting his maniacal music that he takes any downtime to relax.

Jon’s spot at the top of the Billboard charts has indeed been years in the making. Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz, his group with Big Sam and Lil Bo, broke through with “Kings of Crunk,” the trio’s fourth album. Released in 2002, the collection exploded last year thanks to “Get Low,” a collaboration with fellow Atlanta rappers Ying Yang Twins.

The album, released on independent TVT Records, has sold more than 1.7 million copies and is one of the top 15 rap records in the country nearly 70 weeks after its release.

Reared in Atlanta, Jon devoured rap, reggae, punk and rock music, and broke through in the early 1990s as a DJ, hosting famously festive house parties.

His good nature as well as his passion for a variety of music genres earned him friends within the city’s burgeoning urban music scene, which was exploding with such acts as TLC, OutKast and Goodie Mob. Jon’s omnipresence on the city’s hip-hop scene helped land him an A&R; position at Jermaine Dupri’s SoSoDef imprint, where in the late 1990s he oversaw a string of successful bass music compilations.

Meanwhile, Jon was working on his own revolutionary material, crafting a signature sound that is as aggressive and in-your-face as Jon is low-key and personable. Jon’s music, built off chants and catchy choruses, burns with the electricity of a lightning bolt and the rage of a Mike Tyson tirade. His music is the yin to his personality’s yang.

Thanks to a slow grind that started in the clubs of Atlanta, later expanded to the Midwest and eventually broke through nationwide, Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz built a foundation as independent artists with modest sales expectations, a key ingredient to their current success.

“We definitely wouldn’t have been as popular as we are if we were on a major,” says the man born Jonathan Smith. “Majors, their bottom line is the numbers. They want to see the record react immediately. With a record like ours, you have to let it build. With crunk records, they have to build in the streets and then they react later at radio and in sales.”

With the group’s first three albums, Lil Jon refined his sound, evolving from a spare, bass-heavy style to the more confrontational and energetic sound that came to be known as crunk.

“Crunk music is music that makes you want to just release energy and just wild out,” Jon says. “I think that’s what people want to do nowadays.

“[These are] messed-up times, the economy’s bad, people are going to war and there’s murder, so people want to have a good time and get their mind off of that stuff.” Thanks to his status as one of the most popular producers in music today, Lil Jon has plenty of ways, in addition to his music, to entertain fans. He has a cartoon deal in development with MTV and will appear with the East Side Boyz and Ying Yang Twins in the forthcoming feature film “Soul Plane.” And his “Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz American Sex Series” video is scheduled for a February release.

Then there’s Crunk!!! Energy Drink, a Lil Jon-endorsed beverage that debuted in Atlanta last month and launches nationwide later this year.

Jon came up with the idea for the drink while on tour in 2002 and hopes to challenge Red Bull in the fledgling energy drink market.

“He saw that there was a void in energy drinks when it comes to marketing to a hip-hop demographic,” said Jon Trecy, director of sales and marketing for Crunk LLC, which is releasing the drink. Lil Jon does not own the company.

“He noticed that virtually all of the energy drinks in the market today were marketing themselves to 16- to 25-year-old suburban kids, vis-a-vis extreme sports, skateboarding,” Trecy explained. “There was no brand really speaking to a hip-hop demographic.”

Jon’s stranglehold on the hip-hop demographic was also noticed by Warner Bros. Records, which signed BME Recordings, which Jon co-owns, to a label deal. “He’s the one person who has single-handedly kind of molded the sound of Atlanta over the last couple of years,” says Naim Ali, the Warner Bros. executive who signed the BME deal.

The first release with Warner Bros., “The King of Crunk & BME Records Present Lil Scrappy and Trillville,” due Feb. 24, is a joint album that introduces two Jon proteges. That release will certainly benefit from Jon’s work with Usher, the East Side Boyz, Ying Yang Twins and YoungBloodZ, the four artists with Jon-produced songs on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart.

Jon is also in talks to work with J.Lo and Janet Jackson and will release debut albums from R&B; singer Oobie and female rapper Chyna Whyte through TVT later this year. The fifth Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz album, “Crunk Juice,” is scheduled for a September release.

Rap, which thrives on new sounds and musical styles, typically discards a sound soon after its commercial peak. Lil Jon, for one, isn’t worried about crunk falling out of favor.

“I think crunk is going to stay around because it’s totally street music,” he says as he readies to leave the hotel with a can of Crunk!!! in his hand. “It is energy music. It’s hard to water down something that is all about the energy, the way it makes you react to the music in the club.

“Crunk is going to stay around as long as the energy stays in the music, and that is the essence of the music. It’s never going to go anywhere.”

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Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz

Discography

Album (Year) Sales

“Who U With, Get Crunk -- Da Album” (1996) 17,000

“We Still Crunk!!” (2000) 60,000

“Put Yo Hood Up” (2001) 620,000

“Kings of Crunk” (2002) 1,700,000

“Part II” CD/DVD (2003) 278,000

“Certified Crunk” (2003) * 39,500

* A compilation of old, mostly previously released material disguised as an album. It was put out by his former label