LIL' JON the WORKAHOLIC
You probably envision Lil’ Jon as a caricature, a cartoon figure who pops up all over the Top 10 list sporting sunglasses, a platinum grill, and an ever-present pimp cup. Even if some hip-hop purists don’t fully appreciate the crunk revolution Jon has spearheaded, you really can’t hate on a man who pulls in five figures to scream patented phrases like "Okaaaay!" and "Yeaaaah!" Now, that’s a pimp! But who would’ve guessed that Jonathan actually scours the health food stores for quality multi-vitamins, loves to cook, and spends his days off curled up on the couch with his family?
The music industry is a hoax; a façade; an image. It’s all about perception, and Jon knows this well. Your favorite rapper isn’t ballin’ as hard as you think he is, and in the same way, Lil’ Jon, contrary to popular belief, isn’t crunk all the time. After years of watching and learning the game, first as a DJ and later as an A&R for Jermaine Dupri’s So So Def, Jon successfully created himself as a brand. The recent Dave Chappelle skits, "A Day in the Life of Lil’ Jon," are further proof that Jon has secured his place in pop culture. He’s recognized by mainstream America on a level that few rappers besides Snoop Dogg have reached. But it didn’t happen overnight.
Once upon a time, the Palladium had earned its reputation as the grimiest club in Central Florida. Every time someone got shot, the club changed its name and reopened. Backstage activities were always off-the-record, and cameras were strictly prohibited. Name any rapper and they’d probably performed there at least once. A bizarre group which most assumed was a one-hit fluke, the Ying Yang Twins, came through and performed their take on a Disney classic, "Whistle While you Twerk." At that time, Lil’ Jon and the East Side Boyz (Lil’ Bo and Big Sam) were just names without a face. Their show was canceled when about fifteen people showed up. I reluctantly pulled up to their tour bus parked at a nearby hotel for our scheduled interview. Based on their singles, "Bia Bia" and "Who You Wit," I was prepared for the worst, envisioning a mass of gold-grilled thugs hovering around my tape recorder in clouds of weed smoke, mumbling something unintelligible. Inside the tour bus, however, I was shocked to meet three polite grown-ass men who spoke clearly, didn’t smell, and even remembered me at their video shoot a month later. Most rappers would be discouraged if their concert only drew fifteen people, but Jon didn’t seem phased. During the interview, it was clear that Jon and the Boyz understood the game inside and out and knew what they’d have to do to get to the top. "We’ve stepped up the production for this new album, ‘Kings of Crunk’," he assured me back then, "I think we just put so much energy into the music that you can’t deny the record."
Several years and two million records later, Lil’ Jon is one of the most sought-after producers in the game. Poor concert attendance is no longer a problem. Strolling through the streets of Little Havana for Miami’s Calle Ocho festival amongst a posse of bodyguards, he attracts fans of all ages and races begging for autographs or photos. After a few hours of screaming "Yeahhh!" underneath the Miami sun with Pitbull, Jon slides into a limo waiting on the back streets. He fields a few calls from celeb friends like Usher ("What up, my nigga?!?") en route to the Hit Factory, where he perfects a "sexy" beat for Christina Milian before heading back to his South Beach mansion to continue work on Lil’ Jon & the East Side Boyz’ third album. Later that night, Jon rolls through Club Deep to finish filming for Pitbull’s "Culo" video. All in a day’s work. Like a true workaholic, even at the peak of his career, he’s still focused and driven. We dragged Jon out of a recording session in Atlanta’s Stankonia Studios to figure out what makes this workaholic tick.
What do your parents do for a living?
My dad is deceased, and my mom is in the Army. She works at a hospital also as a supervisor in the operating room. Right now she’s been called into active duty, so she’s away with the Army.
What other side gigs do you have besides being an artist and producer?
We’ve got BME the label through Warner Bros with Trillville, Lil’ Scrappy, and Bohagon, and we got the label through TVT with Lil’ Jon, Chyna Whyte, and Oobie. Then we’ve got the Crunk energy drink, and we got the porn, Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz "American Sex Series."
Are you starring in the porno?
Nah, I’m just wildin’ out, talkin’ shit. Hypin’ shit up, so to speak.
What’s the function of the East Side Boyz?
(laughing) What’s the function? Well, we all write the stuff together. We do everything together. I’m like the Quincy Jones of the group, I produce and coordinate everything. I’m the one that ties everything together.
What’s a typical day like in the life of Lil’ Jon?
Well, today I got up around 2 or 3, ate breakfast, came straight to the studio, and I’ll probably be here til 6am. I’m in the studio finishing up Trillville & Scrappy’s album, so I’m mixing as well as doing new tracks. Then, I’m also on the phone handling other things at the same time. When I’m on the road, I’m usually doing shows, doing TV, hosting parties, networking, stuff like that.
When you’re at a club do you feel like you’re working?
I’m always working when I go to a club, period. A club is where you make contacts for future deals, and people – your fans – get to see you, talk to you, take pictures. It’s really a networking thing. But as long as I’m drinking, I’m having a good time.
What’s the worst and best parts about your job?
The worst part, of course, is that you don’t get to see your family that much. The best part is the money and the traveling, and the free shit.
What’s the longest you’ve gone without sleep?
Maybe about 24 hours straight. But I’ll go like two or three weeks of just two or three hours of sleep on the plane. Three weeks of that shit is just torture on your body. I might be in the office, then I might go do TV or press shit, then I might go to the club that night or the studio and then the club. Do that every day for a week and it starts to wear your body down.
How do you deal with that?
Really, it’s just naps. Naps get me by. You gotta take naps on the plane. If you on the tour bus, whenever we get on the bus I get on my bunk and I don’t get outta my bunk til we get to our destination. I learned that you’ve gotta get rest whenever you can. Same thing with the plane. As soon as we get on that plane I’m going to sleep, cause I don’t know when I’ll be able to rest again. Crunk juice keeps me up too. And a lot of straight-up crunk, cause crunk gives you energy! And you’ve gotta take vitamins. I’ve been taking like, real multi-vitamins from the health food store. Specialty health food stores make their own shit, some other shit, and it gives me a lot of energy.
What time of day is most productive for you?
I’m a night owl, so as far as making beats, we usually get into our little zone around 6pm and that lasts til around 9 or 11pm. That’s the best time for me to make tracks. But I don’t get up early, cause I’ve usually been up all night. As far as business, I don’t really make phone calls and start handling business until after noon. I’m really a night person, so I can stay up til 5, 6 in the morning and still be productive.
What do you think is the key to success?
I think you have to listen and learn from everything. You’ve gotta take it all in, and that’s how you learn to deal with other situations. And you’ve got to be able to stay focused and you can’t get distracted. You gotta really have blinders on. If you come in the studio, you’ve gotta come to work. Usually when I come to the studio I don’t have a whole bunch of people with me. It’s just me, the musicians who are playing on the shit. It’s just us and the engineer. We just go in there and stay focused. When you’ve got thirty niggas in your crew in the studio laughing, gigglin’, and playin’ around, you lose focus real easy. I just don’t like a whole lot of people in the studio. If I’m in there trying to mix, mixing is basically just listening over and over to the song, critiquing every aspect of the track. If you’ve got thirty people in the studio talking, laughing, and smoking weed, you can’t concentrate on what you’re doing. You can’t be productive. But for some people, that’s how they vibe, they need a lot of people around them to feed off that energy. But for me, it’s just the muthafuckers that’s working.
And reporters harassing you?
(Laughing) Yeah, tryin’ to get interviews and shit.
What type of goals do you set for yourself?
I set a whole bunch of little goals to get to that big goal. If you set a whole bunch of little goals, it’s easier to get over those little humps than it is to get over a big hump sometimes. See, I work so hard that I really don’t look at stuff as success. I just look at it like, I got past that so now I can move onto the next project. Instead of trying to finish a whole album, the first goal is to go to the studio and get the beats done. The next goal is to get some good hooks for the beats. I always do the beats first. Then, the next goal is to get the verses. I just take everything one step at a time so I can keep focused, ‘cause I’m already doing so many different things, setting goals is a distraction to me. I’ve got small goals that help me accomplish the big goals.
Did you have any formal training?
Nah, I used to be kinda sorry when I was younger, just real lazy and shit. Then my homeboy Rob got on me one good time and I think it really stuck. Then, being an A&R at So So Def, I was responsible for putting together a project from beginning to end, so that helped me out a lot. Basically, I just pay attention and learn from every situation I’ve been in.
Out of all the things you’ve accomplished in your career, which one is most significant to you?
I think the biggest thing to me was getting an American Music Award. That’s fuckin’ mainstream America, it’s all about the fans, and I got to meet Dick Clark. The second biggest thing was doing Dick Clark’s Rockin Eve on ABC. That was big because I’ve watched Dick Clark for years. I remember watching American Bandstand, I remember watching Dick Clark’s Rockin Eve before I was old enough to even stay up late. So to do that show, that was a major accomplishment.
I remember congratulating you for being 2x platinum and you said, "We’re almost there." What did you mean by that, what level are you hoping to reach?
Well, we’ve actually sold 1.7 million scanned. Most of the time, when muthafuckers get certified platinum, they really ain’t sold a million yet. They might have shipped two million, but they might not have sold two million. We’ve sold 1.7 million, we just sold 70,000 last week, so we should be double platinum by the time people read this – really. That’s an accomplishment. Because I remember when we were just starting the album, going to Miami and starting with the beats. I remember when we were struggling with "I Don’t Give a Fuck," tryin’ to make people feel the record. And we got past that to "Play No Games" and "Get Low."
"Get Low" was obviously the runaway hit from the "Kings of Crunk" album, so why was it the third single and not the first?
Because a hit is always gonna be a hit. You’ve got to open your audience up first. We used "Play No Games" and held "Get Low" back because we always knew it was a hit. With my music, I understand that everything comes from the clubs. You’ve got to let records build up first before you go to radio and all that shit, cause it’ll last longer. The longer you let it simmer in the streets and the clubs, the more it’s gonna be real to people, and the longer the record lasts. So "Get Low" was in the clubs a long time, building, building, building. We dropped "Play No Games" to open up our audience a little more, like in Miami ‘cause we had Trick Daddy on it. Then it opened up the East Coast audience a little more because Fat Joe was on it. So that opened the doors a little more for "Get Low." Some of the radio stations that didn’t give a fuck about Lil’ Jon & the East Side Boyz paid us a little more attention after that. They played "Get Low" more ‘cause they liked "Play No Games." So we just let it build. We knew it wasn’t going nowhere, ‘cause it was constantly building. But with "Play No Games," that opened more doors so the timing was better for "Get Low," and it turned out to be a bigger hit.
Some people say that crunk music is gonna die out. Do you feel like your days are limited, or you’ll have to change your style up to stay relevant?
Nah. I look at it like this: we ain’t changed at all. We’ve been doing the same ol’ shit, it’s just getting national attention now. I don’t think the music will ever die out cause this is how we live our life. Atlanta, Florida, Alabama, South Carolina, the South, the Midwest, we live our lives on getting crunk. It’s all about getting crunk, that’s a part of our life. So it’s definitely not gonna go nowhere, cause people always wanna get crunk. I don’t even pay attention to what people say about the music, we just make our records. I think that’s why we’re successful: we ain’t tryin’ to please nobody but our fans. We just want to please the people that support us, so we don’t give a fuck about what anybody else says. The music is getting bigger and bigger. Nas, one of the greatest lyricists ever, wanted to get on one of my beats. He hollered at me to do some shit, and we went to the studio and knocked that shit out in one day. And Usher, "Yeah," with me and Usher and Ludacris, is about to be one of the biggest records of the year.
Isn’t that the same beat you did for Petey Pablo’s "Freek-A-Leek"?
What happened was that I did a whole bunch of beats for Mystikal, who’s on Jive Records. Mystikal never used it, so I just had the beats laying around. The record company had a copy of the tracks, so I didn’t even know they gave the beat to Petey. Me and Petey saw each other, and he’s like, "Yo, I used your beat." The record company took the beat, put Petey on it, mixed it, mastered it, put it on a 12", and I didn’t know nothing about it. At the same time, Usher’s people had the record too. They had did a song to the shit, so we ended up working it out where I did a new beat. The beats are similar, cause of course it’s derived from the same shit. But, you know, it’s actually helping Petey out a lot too ‘cause now his record can get mixed with something. It helped both sides, it hyped both records up, so it’s amazing how everything happens for a reason.
Where do you get your work ethic from? Is it money or success that motivates you?
I just look at it like a job. I’ve got a job to do and I’m really focused on what I’ve got to do. Even though I’m tired, I just suck it up and don’t complain and get the job done. I don’t really know where I get it from. Like I said, Rob had got on me one time. I really can’t remember the details but I know that’s one thing that stuck out in my mind. Rob had just got on me cause I was really just a lazy ass muthafucker. And then, I don’t know, I guess whatever he said kinda kicked in and helped me get on point. I ended up training myself how to work.
Did you ever have a real job before you got into music?
Nah, I never really had a real job. I used to work at this little skateboard shop renting out roller skates, and after that I started DJing. Before that I was throwing newspapers with my daddy.
When was the last time you took a day off?
Whenever I come off the road I try to take a day off and turn the phone off. Over the Christmas holidays I didn’t work, I was chillin’ at the house cookin’ and shit. Usually I cook, or my girl and my son will sit on the couch with me and watch DVDs all day and night. Or me and my son play video games.
Do you ever feel like your work causes you to miss out on anything as far as your personal life?
Yeah, because anybody who has a workaholic spouse will tell you that it’s gonna put some stress on your relationship. I was watching this special on Bob Marley, and one of his girlfriends was like, "If he had to go to the studio, oh yeah, I was gonna suffer." Like, he put his work first. That’s what workaholics do: they put work before anything. Of course you put your family up there as a priority, but you know you’re not gonna see ‘em much. Since I’ve made it a little better now, I can afford to take off for my son’s birthday or my girl’s birthday, but sometimes I would have to sacrifice doing a club date for some of those things. You’ve just gotta give your family time. If I’m gone for three or four months, I gotta take off a couple days or weeks. I just have to make time once in a while, cause if you’ve got a good person in your corner they’re gonna understand that you’re doing what you have to do, and you gotta do it while you’re hot. Otherwise you’re gonna miss out on a lot of opportunities.
And you’re definitely hot right now.
I’m just getting started. That’s how I look at it. ‘Cause I ain’t even tapped into my full potential as a producer ‘cause I’m doing so much shit. I’m not like a normal producer that sits in the house and makes beats. I do shows, I gotta run a company, we’ve got the energy drink, so I can’t just focus on beats.
Do you plan on ever focusing solely on production instead of being an artist yourself?
Yeah, I basically want to just produce because the artist thing is hard. It’s hard to constantly make a hit. It’s easier to produce a hit than it is to come up with a concept and write the shit. It’s easier to just do a beat for somebody than for you yourself to be the artist.
So that’s why you’ve started to focus more on artists like Lil’ Scrappy and Trillville?
Yeah, I’m tryin’ to spread it out.
Are you looking for artists?
Nah, we not really looking for new artists right now cause we’ve got a lot on our plate. I’ve gotta do about four or five albums this year alone.