Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz’ 2001 TVT debut, Put Yo Hood Up, teases a first attempt at crunk&b. That discovery came in 2001, before the mainstream came to know Jon as the life of crunk’s party. “Somewhere along the way, Lil Jon made an unexpected discovery: crunk beats work for lovers as well as fighters,” Kelefa Sanneh, then with The New York Times, wrote during the chart debuts of crunk&b – what Jon and his camp called their crunk-and-R&B hybrids.

Usher’s “Yeah!,” featuring Ludacris and Jon, hit #1 in the United States, and became the second highest selling record of the 2000s. But as Chappelle added a Lil Jon impersonation to his repertoire, there came a plot twist. These easy laughs speak to everyone’s general ideas about crunk: bass you hear from outside the club, mobbed-up chants, mayhem. In 2013, on MTV’s comedy clip show Ridiculousness, Lil Jon imagines what a pastor would say at his funeral service: “He was a good man, YEAH!” It’s a good joke, though folks in polite society often need to let go of any fear of judgement, before they can exert as much guttural energy as he does. “That’s all he says in the whole song, n-!” he exclaims. Chappelle stops the video at the five-second mark, long enough for Jon to yell “OKAY!” twice. But the Chappelle’s Show audience doesn’t see that action unfold. It’s their 2002 “I Don’t Give A.” video, where they meet Mystikal, Krayzie Bone and other famous friends at Club 112, for a night inspired by Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up” video. On the screen is Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz, the Atlanta trio that branded crunk for mainstream consumption. He can’t help but show the source material first. 15 years ago, comedian Dave Chappelle introduced one of his best celebrity impersonations.

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