All my stuff
has to have that bass.

That’s one of the first things Jonathan “Lil Jon” Smith made known to this quad-hungry journalist. Speaking to the now uber-producer in the balmy confines of Miami, it was natural that talk would begin with some bottom banter.

Perhaps no other city openly embraced the Roland 808 as a compositional tool as much as the Magic City, and from the golden period of 1983 to 1990 nearly every Miami release had some shard of 808 in the mix. Rolling hi-hats and modulated bass booms sound equally as good in the car as in the club and the pioneering Miami producers knew that full well. Pretty Tony Butler was turning a Kraftwerk jones into an electronic genre unto itself, putting down the foundation of what the laymen now call Miami bass. Beatmaster Clay D was doing his thing simultaneously, taking the energy of the Pretty electro and turning out hook-laden party jams that were rocked by Floridians and Georgians but ignored by everybody else sans a hardcore community in southern California.

Georgia, and Atlanta in particular, has a special affinity with the music of Miami. One of the only non-Miami artists on the Luther Campbell’s early Skyywalker label was MC Shy D, himself an Atlanta native. The ears in ATL were apparently tuned to the same low tones and cracking highs as the south Florida people, but it would take a few years before an identifiable Atlanta sound would begin to materialize. By the time the central Georgia noise became something recognizable, a slowing down process had already begun. Blame it on the combustibles, blame it on Texas and screw, in any case it was evident in the late ’90s that most Southern folks preferred their music on lean mode rather than fast and furious. But furious is a little bit different than ferocious, as we know. Enter crunk.

Lil Jon and his partner Paul Lewis were DJing around Atlanta in the early to mid-’90s when they decided to get into the custom remix game and torque some hip-hop/reggae hybrids. The first piece of gear acquired in this pursuit was an Akai MPC3000. As only some Bass Fantasy movie could have planned it, the MPC was purchased from none other than the Beatmaster, Clay D. Witness torch passing. Quick to put the Eastside sound on the map, Jon’s earliest production can be spotted on a few Capleton tracks from the mid-’90s. In ’97, Jon, and his Eastside Boyz partners Lil Bo and Big Sam, released an LP called Who U Wit? on the local Mirror Image imprint. The chanted party hooks became solidified as the Eastside’s M.O., even if the production still has its head in the clouds of mid-’80s Miami. Perhaps the ghost of Clay D was still lingering in the machine.

That same year Smith remixed the Usher smash “You Make Me Wanna” and it is there that the true Lil Jon sound can be seen at its advent. Hi-hats seem to be the lifeblood of this track, and Jon elaborates, “I started with the hi-hat and just the clap, then the 808…just clap and then sprinkle around it.” This remix also has that big, fuzzy bottom end that marks all of Jon’s best known music, and he adds, “One thing I remember about growing up is that people used to ride Cadillacs and the trunk would rattle, so whenever I make tracks I want my shit to shake the trunk.” The Usher track saw Jon’s production take a giant step towards becoming the ultimate club and trunk funk.

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