April13

Robin Hood Ain't Never Been Crunked

The music genres Hip-Hop (or Hippity-Hoppity) and Soul need some help. They're not in any trouble financially, nor are they in trouble of losing listeners. While some artists are consistently creative and others are one-hit wonders, neither of these are problems that I'm referring to. The trouble is brewing from the producing world, specifically from one man – that happens to have more than $30,000 worth of gold in his mouth.

The man I'm talking about is Lil John, formerly (or is he still?) a part of Lil John and the East Side Boyz. Before you say you've never heard of him, I dare say that you have actually HEARD him in a rap song. Or two. Or 14. How would you know that you've heard him? Simple... ever listened to a recent rap song that has some dude yelling the words "What!", "Yeeeeah!", "O-kaaaay!" or "Lil Jooooohn!" – not to be confused with the yelling that DMX does. Lil John's yells are unmistakable and it's in about 90% of the songs out there right now.

The reason is because he's one of the industry's top producers (the guys that come up with the snappy tracks in the backgrounds of songs). He's no where close to being as good as Dr. Dre (Detox will drop in 2005, finally!), in my opinion, but being such a powerful and popular producer allows you to jump in any song and add your own flare to it. In the case of Lil John, it's to yell stupid words in a stupid way... but fans must not be able to get enough of it, hence the influx of Lil John screaming everywhere. Interested? Not surprisingly, you can even get Lil John ringtones.

Dude's a total freak. We saw some show about him while on our snowboard trip and the guy is a nut. Anyone that spends that much money on jewelry for your mouth, neck or fingers... well... I don't know... HE'S A FREAK!

I really think he doesn't add anything to the music he produces with his yelling and it makes me wonder what Boyz II Men (when did they lose a member?) and Run-DMC would've sounded like back in the day had they used him. Ew.

Want to have some fun? Play with the Lil John Soundboard!

+ original post date: April 13, 2005 06:59 PM
+ categories: Music, Pop Culture