One Song - Lil Jon's "Get Low" with Lil Jon

Episode Date: July 30, 2025

Diallo and LUXXURY go from the window to the wall with the King of Crunk himself, Lil Jon, to unpack his 2000s club classic, “Get Low.” The superproducer shares how punk shaped his sound, why his DJ instincts are his secret sauce in the studio, and for the first time ever, reveals an early version of “Get Low”… featuring a vocoder?! Join the guys for a deep dive into the sound that redefined Southern hip-hop and lit up dance floors around the world. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to RocketMoney.com/onesong today. Songs Discussed:  “Get Low” - Lil Jon & the Eastside Boyz “Goodies” - Ciara ft. Petey Pablo “Turn Down For What” - DJ Snake & Lil Jon “Yeah!” - Usher ft. Lil Jon & Ludacris “Shots” - LMFAO ft. Lil Jon “Tell Me When To Go” - E-40 ft. Keak da Sneak “Freek-A-Leek” - Petey Pablo “Who U Wit” - Lil Jon & the Eastside Boyz ft. Playa Poncho “Ice Cream Paint Job” - Dorrough “Tour (Dynamik Duo Remix)” - Capleton “Whatz Up, Whatz Up” - Playa Poncho feat. L.A. Sno “When Will I See You Smile Again?” - Ricky Bell “My Boo” - Ghost Town DJ’s “Freak It” - Lathun “On Broadway” - George Benson “Re-Ignition” - Bad Brains “Blitzkrieg Bop” - The Ramones “Institutionalized” - Suicidal Tendencies “Rock Lobster” - the B-52’s “Party Up (Up In Here)” - DMX “Planet Rock” - Afrika Bambaataa & the Soulsonic Force “Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik” - Outkast “Moments In Love” - Art of Noise Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When I got on the mic, I was like, yeah. They were like, wow. Like, he really sounded like that. Did y'all hear, did y'all feel that? Because everybody in the studio went like this. It was like a different person showed up. I'm so excited I'm about to put on my shades because we're about to get crunk. We're about to have the best time.

We're talking about a song that is one of the ultimate hip-hop party songs of all time. And today we're going to answer the question, did punk and hip-hop have a baby in Atlanta? And is that baby crunk? Wow. To help us answer this, we have a very special guest. The man behind the track that brought Crunk to the top of the Pop Tarts. I'm like jumping out of my chair right now. We're not talking 10 songs, not talking 20 songs.

We're not talking 1511 songs. We talk about one song, and that song is Get Low with the one, the only Godfather at Crunk, Liljohn. All right, first thing is the window is this fucking way, guys. Oh, yeah, you're right. But the wall is also this one. Okay. That's the right direction. It's always to the left.

Yeah. To the right. So, right. Well, depending on where you're standing. I thought you literally just try to find the closest thing to the window. I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, Diala Riddell. And I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist luxury, aka the guy who whispers, Interpolation.

And this is one song. The show where we break down the stems and stories behind iconic songs across genres, tell you why they deserve one more listen, sometimes with the originator of that song in the room with us, just like today. You will hear these songs like you've never heard them before. And if you want to watch one song, you can watch this full episode on YouTube and Spotify. And while you're there, please like and subscribe.

You may know our guests from a slew of hip-hop, pop, EDM, regatone, bangers of every genre. I'm talking goodies. Turn down for what? Yeah. Shots. Tell me when to go. Freakily.

This guy knows no musical balance. He's collaborated with everyone from E-40 to Britney Spears, from Usher to Steve Aoki. But in fact, The only thing you can hold against this artist is that he attended Douglas High School instead of my alma mater, Benjamin E. May's High School. Give it up for Grammy Award winning super producer, Little John. Little John's in the building today. No astros.

I had to get you. No Astros. Mays High Raiders for life. What's up, man? So glad to have you on the show. And say, thank you, by the way. Crazy story of my life is that I'm walking down the street in Hollywood. And a gentleman comes out to me and says, excuse me, aren't you luxury?

and it was you and I couldn't believe it was you in fact I had to like walk across street after we talked and I was like wait was that Hemp like I was really standing there You were looking at me like because you said your name was John and I was like some people and then you go some people call me little John

and I was literally texting me like I think I met little John because you didn't have the grill you were just like a guy on the street I was going to the Mac store you're going to the Mac store you were fixing your computer yeah I was man Can I just say real quick, you know, people who listen to the show know I'm from Atlanta.

Atlanta means a lot to me. We grew up in the same part of Atlanta. Yeah, that's crazy. I didn't know that. Yeah. Like, I lived on Rebecca Drive off of Lenhurst. And, you know, my growth store was the Wind Dixie on MLK. I used to, so I grew up on Flamingo Drive off of Benjamin Mays.

I know Flamingo. I used to have a friend on Flamingo. Absolutely. It's a small, tight-knick, sort of middle-class, black community. And especially growing up then, we had a lot of pride. in the fact of growing up in the Swats as it was called back then. One thing

I think people should know about where we grew up too. We saw Black Excellence on a daily. We saw the neighbors. I mean, we saw the mayor's kids. We saw city councilmen. Marvin Arrington lived down the street.

You know, so we saw that we could be great. We had positive influences in our lives. I have so many questions. And we're going to get to, hopefully, a lot of them because you were a DJ in Atlanta, And I can still remember, I think the first time I knew of you as an artist, I was on Morehouse's campus and I heard who you wit. Oh. And the weather was like perfect and who you wit came on and everybody went nuts.

And I was just like, what is this song? In fact, I just felt like I felt like you figured out very early on with who you went like this style of music that was just missing. But in some ways encapsulated what it was to be young and energetic in Atlanta. You know what I'm saying? Wow. That's a perfect observation because when it was crazy about who you went, it was the first song I ever recorded as an artist and it was a hit. Not many people can say the first time you go in the studio as an artist.

You get a hit record. Yeah. And what we did, me and the East Side Boys with that song was we wanted to create a song that got people in Atlanta turned up, crump. That's exactly what we wanted to do. Because it was, we were getting turned up to all these people's songs from all over the place in Atlanta, but it was nothing strictly designed for us.

For us. Like that. We're going to play a clip of Who You Went. Here's who you went. A couple things. Yes. I don't know if people really paid attention to this, but most Little John Eastside Boy's songs are visual.

Like, we paint a picture, like, to the flow. Yeah. Like, get your ass to the dance. Yeah. Get them up. You know, we're giving instruction. Yeah. And that's how we wrote the songs.

Like, from that. song all the way to get low. Yeah. You're telling people what to do. Let me see you get low, girls, took that ad to the flow. We actually, it's visual. You can see it. And some people might think that song sounds familiar, but you don't know it. And that's because

DeRoe used the same. He did an interpulations of the beat for ice cream paint job. Yes. Holy cow. Wow. Do you sample you or do you just use it? I heard the story was he used

beat on a mixtape and did the song to it on my beat to the mixtape and then I guess he got signed and he decided to just do it over. It's important to point out that you were DJing already for a number of years at this point and as a DJ you get the immediate response and you have such a like your brain turns into like a learning machine for like what works what's effective and it's on the energy level. It's on the energy level more than it is the chords and notes and melodies and lyrics. It's like what did I do, like what beat or what sounds are effective? So is that when you went in the studio to make for the first time? Is that in your mind?

Like, okay, I'm going to do what works. I think that's my secret sauce as a producer. Being a DJ, it gives me an extra gear that other people don't have because they don't see things the way I see it. Because I'm always trying to make a record, a song, that DJs are going to love to play. Like the go-to record to rock a party. That's why all of my records are club records,

cause I'm a DJ. Because you've been DJing and you've been reverse engineering. You're like, oh, that beat, that hi-hat sound, that clap sound. Right. Or this is going to slap you like this. Or this, the kick has got to hit hard.

Your weight's got to be right. How did you put that together with just like literally to make it? What production did you get your first like, I don't know if Triton would have been around, but did you get your first 808? Like how are you starting to make it to translate your DJ knowledge into making stuff? So I was working with this guy named Paul Lewis. we had a, it was me and him producing together.

Our production company was called Dynamic Duo. And our first hit record that we got that was big, that actually went number one in New York, was Capleton Tour, the remix. So we did that. Yeah, it's Capleton. Huh? Yes.

Is that the reggae? The one with the slick Rick beats. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we produced that in Atlanta, but we didn't make the beat, but we told the guy what to chop and how we wanted it and what to Sam. And after that, we bought our own 3,000.

And I started to learn how to use the 3,000. Okay. I'm still on NPCs. Okay. I want to play a little bit of it. Wait a second. That children's story? Yeah.

It's deeper than that. Hold on. So this is the dynamic duo remix of Tour by Capleton. You produced this. In Atlanta. I have played the song so many times. I did not know the... Dynamic duo is you.

I did not know this was you. bro. Listen, I think that's why we're so excited about this episode. Get Low is like the first of a massive string of hits in the mid-2000. I've already named some Freakalek, Salt Shaker goodies. But you're not just the dude on these tracks. You're

producing so many hits. And we were researching this episode. I just kept saying, he did that? He did that? Like, I'm just going to go ahead and ask you right now. Do you feel like you get enough credit? Like, I feel like we're music nerds. No.

Music nerds. There's your answer. So, like you just said, wow, I didn't know you did that. Like when I did verses with me and T. Payne, everybody. That is like one of the best things about COVID. People thought, ah, T-Pain is going to smoke, little John. And I went on there and did what I had to do. And when tour played, I saw like DJ Scratch, who they hip-hop head was like, he ain't do that.

Let me fact check. And real time in the comments, he was like, he did do that. Like, so that's the early 90. That's 95 or something. So many parties. And this is around the time of who you went. We did who you went after this. I think we did that first.

Yeah, because we didn't use the drum machine on it. We just told the guy what to do. And then 95, we did who you went, and it came out in 96. And even songs that I didn't necessarily do the beat for, I co-produced, like, my boo. Let's talk about my boo. It comes out on this So-So-Deaf bass, bass all-stars compilation that I think anybody

with a car and a CD player owned at some point, like we all did. And by the way, can I just say, Volume 1 has other classics on it. It's got What's Up, What's Up? By Play a Poncho. Yeah. So many hits on this song, but of course, there's My Boo. And the thing about my boo

is that, you know, with the exception of maybe come on ride the train or a whoop, there it is. Like, this is literally one of the biggest bass crossovers of all time. I think it is, because it came back. Remember, it just came back like five years ago. It came back when TikTok decided that they're going to do a new dance called The Running Man. Right. And everybody was dancing

in my boo. So that song is crazy because we listen to a lot of mixtapes in Atlanta. Yes. And it was the J-Team team, which is Edward J, DJ Smurf, Lady DJ, DJ Jelly. So these were the two big mixtape guys in Atlanta. And what they would do on certain mixtapes would take Miami-based beats and put like, new edition tell me when I'll see you smile again over the bass beats. Slow jams. Slow jams over bass beats. So what I did was say, let's turn that into a song, a real song. And that's when I got with Carl Moe and I'm my boy Rodney,

cool collie who was actually down with DJ, M.C. Shidey. He was down with M.C. Shidey. And he worked at Def Jam. and he would just come to the office and hang out with me your social death and we just talked. If you've been living under a rock, this is a song called My Boo-by, Ghost Town DJs. I've been watching.

I used to yoke it up to that song, you know. Once again, this is the hill I'm going to die on. You guys are trying to make yeat a thing. Yeek is and will always be. Did you ever used to yoke it up? I could not yeek. You couldn't yake? But I used to make tapes for the dancers.

Even I could yiege, John? I mean, I could yoke a little. little bit, but I wasn't like doing all of the... No, you had to do the... Yeah, I can do that. I can do that. The simple parts of the yeek. It wasn't simple for all of us.

Some of us had to practice that. And I mean, to your earlier point, think about all the dances that we had back there. We had the bankhead bounce. We had yke. We had ragtop. You know, my boy, Tori, you could ragtop with the best of them. Ragtop, don't you stop?

Ragtop, don't you stop? Like, I feel like there was so much culture coming out of Atlanta. And you were working as an A&R at So So, Def. on this album, pulling it together. Like, is that the reason why you weren't able to claim more credit for these songs? Is it because you were in A&R? Yeah, so with My Boo, I should have been listed as a producer, but this was my first project.

Yeah. I don't know, I can, all of this is producing. It's my first thing, so I don't want to overstay. I was just always out. You know, if I wasn't DJing, I was always out, and I was running to Germain and art. Sometimes if he had a show with like Silt Times Leather or whoever I go check, just say what up. And he came to me one day and he was like, I'm getting ready to start my label and I just see you everywhere.

I see you everywhere. He was like, I want you to be a part of my label. I want you to do A&R and Street Promotions. I was like, what the hell is an A&R? What is all that? I don't know, you know. He was like artist and repertoire. Yeah.

So he told me what was up. And then I came in in 93. I started working for Social Deaf in 93. I graduated high school, 89, so 9091, DJing. Then I got to my top of DJ in 91, 92, 93, and I stepped away to go work at So So Death. You mentioned a moment ago, too, that you were A&R, and in retrospect, the line between A&R and producer, you now know what it is differently. Right.

What is the line between A&R and producer? How would you explain that to people? Well, I guess A&R is kind of say, hey, I want you to go work with this guy. Yeah. And you leave it at that. Okay. You don't, and then they might send you the track later and you're like, change this, change that. You're not in the studio making decisions.

Yeah, I'm in there. I was in the studio from conception to mix, to final mix, everything. That's way beyond A&R. Yes, but I didn't know that. I thought I was just doing my job. Nobody voluntarily gave you the extra credit or points that you might have deserved. Well, I got points off the whole album, so I got paid regardless, you know, because I was a, I did get my executive producer points. on all of the social database

All-Stars. So that's got me my first like Mercedes and BMWs and what else I got? Suburban. I got a little to check. Okay.

You're doing all right. Well, it definitely worked out. I mean, like, you guys continue to put out these compilations. Volume 2 has one of my favorite bass songs. And it's another example what you were saying about

a ballad put over a bass beat. Let's listen to a little bit of Freakit by Lathan. You're going to talk about That's one of the ones. So Lathin sent demos to me at So So Death. He was an R&B singer. Yes. But I was like, huh, he would sound dope on some bass.

Me and Paul, dynamic duo, produced that beat. We used that, what's that Lookout Weekend, the drum? From Debbie Depp. Oh, yeah, Debbie Depp. That's the drums, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We originally had on Broadway, boom, boom. George Benson.

That's what I'm hearing. Boom. They were like, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. So we were like, okay, let's just cut the phrase. Wow. And that was good enough. They were cool.

It's the Miami connection for that like kind of electro, like planet rock into craftwork. It all goes to planet rock. Right. The boom, boom, boom. Beat is coming from, it's going from craftwork to Miami to Planet Rock to Miami. to you, to Debbie Debb. Oh, wow, there's five layers getting here. I'm thinking about it. It's insane.

What the fuck were we thinking of you on Broadway on the bass song? Like, that's insane. Think about that. Hey, George, hey George Benson. Listen to a freak it by lateh. George Benson on Debbie Deb. I wouldn't know.

It's insane. That is some postmodern. We played it over, though. Collaging. We didn't sample him. We played it over. We played the baseline. So that's my homey playing bass.

Don't do. Don't don't. But that is, Craig, if you think about that now, nobody would do that. Who would do that? But it works. And it's still going, that song is still getting played in the trail rides and all of that.

Well, City Girls and I'm sure sampled it. Oh, yeah, that was a shining moment for me too. Whenever you as an artist get sampled, it's like, wow, I made it. And I've been sampled so much so I'm like, I really, really, really. I've got one for you. So just a show is about sampling. Interpolations. Go back to who you went and just play the first two seconds. Okay.

I'm going to point out something to everybody. Stop. That height has been in about 2,000 hip-hop songs. It started right there. I created, I made that sound. You made that sound? Is that your voice? I made that sample. Okay. I sampled it from something I'm not going to tell anybody where.

You don't want anybody coming for you? But I sampled that and made that sound. and later somebody must have sampled it from that record and put it in like a producer pack that got passed around throughout the industry and it's in probably $2,000. Do you ever think that way, like as a producer? I have to be careful about what I isolate.

Like what sound someone else can take from me in the same way that I've been taking these sounds? No. You don't worry about it too much. I mean, I don't really sample. If you listen to most of my productions, I don't know. Because I want my fucking publishing.

I feel like that was how, because even Kanye and Jess Blaze, they were still so sample-driven, but you and Farrell, like you guys were literally just creating these noises and you got to keep so much more of the publisher. You produced one of the biggest hits of the 2000s. Let's talk about it.

This is, yeah. Name that song in one note. While we were playing that, you said that's one of those songs you recognize in the first note. Let's play the first note. Yeah. That's technically two notes,

but we know what that is. Yeah. Asher becomes a massive star. Yeah, wins a Grammy. This song takes your career to the next level. What does this moment like for you? Surreal. Like, it's pretty crazy because I just go in the studio to have fun

and just make records that DJs want to play and that's going to rock the party. And so now, like, all these years later, make it to the Super Bowl is insane. You performed it at the Super Bowl. And not just that is like I was musical director for the show. And then I got like four or five songs in the show. And I performed in the show. show with Usher and I have my own spot. It's like all these years of grinding and doing all this work and being in the clubs

and networking and sending out, I remember sending out my vinyl myself, taking packages to the post office and being in Mixo Power Summit or wherever and giving out vinyl and CDs and all of this hard work. Calling the P.D. at the radio station trying to get them to add my songs myself. all of this hard work has brought me to the Super Bowl and in a larger capacity than I ever could have dreamed of, just being a part of the inner workings

and putting it together. I'm still kind of mind-blown by all of that and it's literally getting to the top of the largest hill or mountain in the world. And it's just like looking down, looking back like on the journey. You know, it's amazing. Yeah.

And Gitlo, the song today, are, I think, safely to say in the genre of crunk. Other than geography, what do you see is the primary difference between crunk and Hefe? Well, it's a feeling. Hefei is

a little bit more happy. You think? I think Crunk is happy, but that's interesting. Crunk is rowdy. That's true. It's rowdy. 36 Mafia, Master P. If you look at all of them,

because that's all considered Crunk, we will say. Yeah, proto-crunk. Yeah, that's rowdy. The Haifie is like, they're smiling. They like, hey, hey. There's some chemicals involved. Exactly.

That's the difference. So you could theoretically have like some, the same beats could maybe be in both, but it's what's happening on top. It's the delivery of the vocal. Like what would you say, like lyrically? No, I think Kronk is just, we have strings. We have pianos. It's orchestral, but it's aggressive.

It's dark. It's dark. Exactly. Hyphy is more, it's happier. It's happier. Now that said, you produced on one of my favorite E-40 albums, My Geto Report Card, and created, I think, one of the greatest Haifie songs of all time,

Tell Me When to Go. So clearly you know how to sort of like create music that satisfies both contingencies. Yeah, well, tell me when to go came. That's all for, I make my best music when the artist's in the studio with me. So that's just me and 40 hanging out for weeks and in the studio working on songs.

And I didn't know about Heifie from what I remember. I don't remember even knowing about Heifie before 40 came to Atlanta and we just was in the studio working. And he started to explain it all to me. And I might have even seen like scraper videos where they're riding around going donuts. And the ghost ride the way to jump out the car and jump back in. So he explained it to me and the energy is for his energy goes through me and it comes out through the drum machine.

Is this grinding. Some beats are just like the hardest-ass beat of all time. What happened would tell me when to go. I was about to leave the studio. It was like five in the morning. I packed my backpack and I was about to go. And Keith to sneak, one of his boys was in the room. And I was like, I'm about to head out.

I'm about to go. He was like, tell me when they go. Tell me when they go. But they've been drinking and smoking all day. He's faded. He don't even know what he's saying. But I'm like, you got the A&R ears. What the fuck is that?

I said, I'm making a song to that. And so I made the beat. I made the beat in 10 minutes. As soon as we did it, we knew it was a smash. We went to breakfast at like 9 a.m. at the beautiful. We went to the beautiful restaurant. I love the beautiful restaurant. We did this song in Stankonia, but we went all the way to the beautiful to eat.

That's far, y'all. To drive from Big Boy Stankonia. To the beautiful restaurant. Because we wanted to have a good breakfast and we just talked about what this record was about to do. And it's about to change. Yeah. We was like, this is about to change everything.

I had a couple quick questions about it. Just going back to the punk-crunk connection. How did you get into punk? And how would you say it influenced your musical tastes and music making? Punk is a major influence on me as a person, little John. I used to skate and through skateboarding in the 80s, Before it was cool and fashionable and all that shit,

it was not cool to be a skater in Atlanta, you know, and black. Because it was not California, so they didn't understand the culture. They had never seen nobody riding around on skateboards. Atlanta in the 80s was more segregated. You had the black communities, Latinos was over here, white people over here, boom, boom. So being a skater helped me to be around kids of all ethnicities and be able to help me be able to identify, connect and socialize with different kinds of people

showed me the world was bigger than my little Southwest Atlanta. How did you get into skating specifically? Like, where did that come from? One of my homeboys got a job at the skate shop. Okay. It was called SkaterScape. It's still there.

People used to go there to rent roller skates and skate through the parks and bikes. So through him getting the job at the skate shop, we just kind of got into skating. Because that place was like one of the centerpieces, When you were skating around Atlanta, you would stop there to get water, ice cream, snack, whatever. And they had a little area where you could skate there. So skateboarding, open me up.

And then through skateboarding, it's the music. Yeah, I was going to say, skate and punk for people who don't know, because I'm from San Francisco. And all my friends were skaters. The skate punk connection is really important than not everyone knows about. When you go to a skate shop, they're playing videos. And those videos are soundtracked by like, whatever, this fits, bad range, right, all the good stuff. So is that how you're hearing it? It's from the skate videos.

It's from being at the competitions, like, are going to, like, yeah, skate competitions. They would play. They would play. Like, I got on the steel pulse by skating, hearing it at different places. And so just, and then just kids listening to different stuff. Somebody might have a boombox while you're skating. They plan suicide or tendencies or bad brains. Bad brains turned into, like, one of my favorite bands of all times.

Bad brains are one of our favorite. bands of all time on the show. We mentioned that probably every third episode. So I'm going up again. And that's a whole, I get to another story about bad brains. But I found punk through skateboarding and it's just the energy of punk. So in the 80s, we had this one club called the Metroplex. It was an underground punk club, no liquor license. And I saw suicidal tendencies there. I think I saw Faith No More there. I think I seen Red, I had chili peppers that. This was when they had the skinheads was around in these. days too. Yeah.

So it was like the, it was by railroad tracks. When I went to that club, that's the first time I seen slam dancing. I seen people stage diving and jumping from the fucking balconies and shit. And I'm like, oh, shit, I was scared as fuck to get in the mosh pit. But you get in the mosh pit, you fall down, somebody pick you up. Yeah. It wasn't all violent. Yeah, there's brotherhood.

Right. People think it's violence in the, that's not what the mosh pits really are about. Somebody fall down, you pick them up. It's just a release of. of like whatever you got going on in life, and that correlates directly to Crunk. Crunk is a release of stress. We used to mosh pit.

We used to jump off stages. We used to wild out spray beer bottles, like just do wild crazy stuff. And it's a direct, same type of energy as punk. And then, like, for me, Bad Brain is one of my favorite bands. HR is one of the greatest performers. He just would do the wildest craziest shit on stage. So I see HR

and I want to do some crazy moves on stage like HR. So it's a direct connection from punk to crunk from my angle. What are your top three punk songs of all time, do you think? Reignition for me. Yes. Bad brains. I against die record.

You gotta go, let's street, Bob, three, let's do suicidal tendencies institution. Fun fact, when we were first talking about what to do on your episode, we were talking exclusively. We were talking about Ramones, Devo. I think you mentioned maybe... Be 52s.

Because rock lobster was my shit. Rock Lobster's pretty great. But I like to break down towards the end. Breakdown towards the end, like especially if you like seeing a concert. Down, down. Those are high school dance moments. And that's a Georgia band, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah, Athens.

Athens, Georgia. Shout to Athens. See, I'm pretty musically diverse. I think that's why I can. and kind of do all kinds of types of music. I don't like to be put in the box at all. We have no box for you here, John. No box.

When you were walking in here, you told me that the song that we all know at love is Get Low actually started off as a session in the late 90s. But then it doesn't even get recorded until 2002. What's the story there? I made the Get Low beat because I love Party Up's beat. I was like, this beat is craving. I want to make something like that. So me trying to do Party Up,

created the track. If you dissect the track, if you listen to party up as whistles and all kind of shit in it and you listen to get low, listen to them back to back and you'll be like,

I see the influence now. Now watch this, watch this, guys. Watch this. Watch this. Watch me do this live. I'm going to do this live. There's the same tempo and everything.

But it's crazy how you were talking about you put different things on top of the music. It changes the genre. DMX is a rowdy, club's New York song, get loads of a twerk song. But it's the same kind of energy. So obviously this is the big, big song

off the Kings of Crunk. And I can't help but notice, depending on where you listen to it, it's either track 17 or track 19. Like, it's way down there on the track listing. Did you know that you had a monster hit with this? Why is it so far down on the album? Well, all of the crook songs and all of that was up front. Yeah. Normally you put the songs that you don't think are hit

at the end. But I don't remember if I knew it was a hit or not. I think I probably thought it was it. I don't remember. But it started to, like, raise its own eyebrows. And we started, we had to pay attention to it because it was making, you know, when you put an album out back in those days, sometimes people would pick their own singles. They were like, this is the one I like.

They fight their label and then they'd eventually be. You got to go chase the single that, I mean, like, the fans. Oh, that's, yeah. The consumers would be like, we like this song. In Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina, we're going to play this one. You know, we don't care about that other stuff they play. We don't play this one.

In this pre-social media era, how are you finding out that it's what people are playing? If it's not a radio thing, like what is the direct feedback from fans that you're learning that it's... I think just from DJs. I think the DJs and we might have had some of the songs, BDS. It might have started popping up on BDS.

I think we... That's the automatic monitoring. Yeah, I think people used to put the whole albums in for BDS, and I think it started to just pop up and we just had to chase it. And that was a year after the album was dropped. It took a year for that song to go. And it just kept going.

It kept going for like two years. I would argue it has not stopped. Oh, yeah. Well, listen, when we get back, we're going to dive into the stems of this landmark song, Get Low. We're going to learn the etymology of the word skeet. And we'll reveal how this song

has one of the most technically complicated skills out of all the songs we have ever covered on one song. I'm not even kidding. It's true. When we get back. With prices going up on just about everything lately, dealing with money can be stressful. Trying to manage subscriptions,

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Welcome back to One Song. We're here with Super Producer Liljohn. Little John, walk us through how you created this song. And where did it begin? It was inspired by Swiss beats production on DMX's party up. I'm inspired by that, going and create this track, and I sit on the track for a little bit, and I go in the studio and try to get a chorus to it,

and I think I come up with the wackest chorus I've ever done in my entire career, and this is the first place. Anyone but the engineers and whoever was in the studio with us has heard this. World premiere of the wackest thing you've ever done. Yeah. I don't even remember who is saying this lyric. It sounds like Kane, but then is it me? I don't know.

But the original idea was let it go. So it wasn't get low. We didn't come up with get low yet. No, no, we thought, let it go is a smash. No, we didn't think it was a smash. We were just, you know, you're coming up with ideas in the studio. We record this. And it didn't make the light of death.

And it goes a little something like this. Let it go. Let it go. Oh, yeah. Let it go. Let it go. Let it go. Uh-huh.

Let it go. I think you made a mistake. Listen, you recorded this in like 1999, maybe early 2000. You got this out before Dad Punk releases discovery. I think you slept on your sake. I try to put it in the mix. You want to hear what it's sound like? Yeah, I want to hear it over the beat.

Let's hear it. So listen, this is what the song might have sounded like, because this is the original beat, the original sounds, but I'm going to mute the vocals on the final. And we would have heard this 23 years ago in the studio. It's starting to grow on me. I think he made a major blunder by not putting that one on that. He's not convinced.

That is not it, man. It's not it. Like, it's crazy to go from that to the window to the wall. Oh, yeah. So, skeet, skeet, skeet. So let's talk about how influential that's been in just like pop culture. I was watching the other day, I had forgot about it. Chris Rock did a whole section of his comedy special about me and that part of the song.

What a sweat drip from my bum! Skeet, skeet, skeet, skeet. And then Dave Chappelle, you know, talking about skeet. You know what I mean? Like, it's crazy. You know, we started with Let It Go, and we ended up there. And then now 20-some years later, the song is still getting played in stadiums. And I'm doing shows every weekend, rocking 10,000 people, and they're going crazy.

I saw some old white politician actually used the word skeet. And I was just like, how did we, how did that become okay? It's only because that song was extremely popular and remained so. By the way, you also said during the break that that Let It Go does sort of harken back to Oh, it's very like 808 Planet Rock. Planet Rock. Arthur Baker kind of sound to that. It's like vocoder, but it might just be a flanger.

I think it's a flanger, right. You're an Arthur Baker fan. And you're an Arthur Baker fan. Yeah, Arthur Baker's the man. Like, his sound influenced, like, a lot of what I do. Absolutely. The electrodes that we've been talking about this whole episode, the beats that you're doing are like electro rhythms with 808s,

and Arthur Baker was a big pioneer. His kicks and his 808s and his snares and his high hats. All of that is foundation still of what is in trap music and hip-hop today. So much of what defines Gitlo is happening in the drum section. So I want to talk about the drums and the use of the 808 specifically. What can you play us out of the stems that is a drum-related, my man? Well, so you're here and you can fill in the blanks on what we don't know, which is a lot.

So to my ear, this sounds like these are 808 kicks and claps. Is that right? 808 kicks clap all day. All day. I'm a big clap guy. I wasn't using snares. Yeah, I haven't heard a single snare on anything of yours. It's something about claps to give it a different feel.

And I remember when I was doing my production, I had other producers laugh at me. You're like, ah, he don't even use snares. And they don't realize it gives you, it's a club sound. It gives it more, to my ears, it gives it more of like a bounce. Snare is a heavier. Yeah, it kind of bounces the kick. Yeah, it bounces off the kick. We'll play.

Let's play, and then we'll talk about it. It just feels like the club. One theory that I have as we're listening and thinking about the difference between a snare or a clap or you can layer them is that it definitely emphasizes the kick more, which is club in the club. There's four on the floor for disco, right? The kick is more important, arguably, for club music

than snares usually are, which can kind of balance out those two instruments. Right. This is very, the kick just seems more, it's heavier. It makes it heavier because it's not being balanced by a snare. Yeah, it's all the club. It's about the club. club feel and yeah like I think the snare is just heavier it's heavier on you right and the

clap is more like laid back can I say I think it actually might be maybe even uh subliminal or or subconscious that we as human beings like to hear that clap right it's like there's a human there's a human there hey that's deep yeah that's good man thank you man I'm trying to keep my job here the high hat I feel like when I was listening to this for the purposes of the show not the many times I've heard it before. I was like, this is one of those rare hip-hop songs where I feel like it's not driven by the high hat in the same way. Maybe I'm wrong about that.

It's the synth. The synths drives it. Bam-bom-bom-bom-bom. The hi-hat is just there to keep timing, I think. As opposed to, like, I think about somebody like Lex Lugar, who, like, I feel like his hi-hat was such the driving force of those Rick Ross songs around like 2010. Can we hear a little bit of the hi-hat? Let's bring in the hi-hat. We got two. We got the closed, doing the eighth notes, and then open.

That's just like groove. That's a groove. But then you also add the shaker, a little syncopation. Now you can actually put some fog on top of this. It could be a funk song. Yeah. Totally.

Because that syncopated, you added that syncopated groove with the shaker. Right. We've talked about shaker now. We always have these like groups of episodes where there's commonalities. Here's another shaker with the spine that makes the ladies dance.

Yeah, on the next movement episode, Axel Kneehouse was like, the secret to the bad boys sits in the late 90s was that you always put in like that little sort of like shuffle that. But here it is again. Because up until the shaker was in there, it was a pretty strict, straight beat. And now I've got a little bit of motion going on. Yeah.

A little bit of syncopation. Can you play what you just played? I'm obsessed with this idea that could have been a funk song. Easy. It could have been a funk song. I hear it. But listen to the groove. Let's listen.

Yeah, the shaker is like the swag. Yeah, give it some swag. Because if you take that out, it's still pretty awesome. But it just adds a little something extra. Those shakers get to the spine It's the spine Axel Neathouse was right Well, he didn't admit it

But yeah, exactly I think it points me Listen, the simplicity of this track Is a big part of what your genius is That's hard to do Let's talk about the bass What is the bass doing in this song? So you've got a couple of different bass

You've got four tracks of bass But they're doing kind of two different things Well, what I'm qualifying is bass It's two different sections Yeah And I'm just saying in the range Sort of the frequency range of bassness, but they're doing a couple of different things.

Here are the cellos. Oh. These are playing kind of the longer legato notes. Not quite legato. And that's another thing you wouldn't think of on the hip-hop track. You've got a fucking cello. The cello is on the hip-hop truck. Well, just right out the gate.

Hey, shall have to bring that cello over here? Just putting that against the 808s. You've already got this cool juxtaposition. I'll play that. And that's already a vibe. Accents. Just the kick drum. Because I think I did the strings first.

Okay. I think I did the strings first, and then that was to go accent, accentuate the strings. Should we play it in order that you did? Let's listen to what you actually did. Did you start with the beat and then go to the strings? So we're actually mapping your creative process here? I don't know if I did the bum, bum, bum, bum, bum first, or if I did the strings first. Let's just see.

Let's just listen. So we have, it looks like, seven different synths here in the instrument section. They're doing three or four different things. Let's start with, I'm just going to start with the high plucks. Just eighth notes, like the hi-hats. And then you have another pluck underneath it like this. That's the one. accent.

And it's crazy, if you take it out of the track, it sounds like it could be some classical music. It absolutely sounds like pitticado, Pizzicado strings. You can see a little quartet. Went down to the Atlanta Philharmonic. Yeah. We're like, hey, guys. Interesting enough, back in those days of the crunk music and all that, we used the pitticadoes in every, like, crunk or trap beat.

That was one of your distinguishing your characteristic sounds. Yeah, strings because they create drama and tension. Tension, yeah. There's a third string, which sounds like this. That's the main melody. Yeah, I was going to say, that's the star right there. Yeah. And I'll connect them.

and everything is accentuating to that. And then I'll bring in the lower cellos from before. So we're just strings right now. This is a string quartet. It's the string quartet remix. Until you added in that bass, it sounded like it could be like the soundtrack to like a horror film. It sounded like the killer is coming down the hall over the life.

Well, that's part of another distinctive thing I've noticed in your work, in your oeuvre of material, is the darkness that we kind of talked about earlier. It's not just the must. minorness of the melodies. Let's talk for a second about an interesting thing that you do in this song, which is when I was trying to figure out, like, what are the chord changes? Like, what are we doing? Like, what's the melodic? What's the journey harmonically? Just because, as we've talked about across this show's 96 episodes, you know, the chord changes are where you have some of the

storytelling of a song. The journey of a song, it usually starts on the home base is the tonic. And then you go one, maybe four or five subdominant, dominant. This song does not have that. But your song does have a journey, and it does have a storytelling journey. So I just want to talk about for a second, the chord changes you're literally using, this is a one to a three, basically. So there's a C minor, two, and E. But there's something a little more going on because it's really sort of C minor and major. I'll play it for you and I'll explain what I'm talking about.

These notes in the main riff, that's a major third and a minor third. What you've done is you've gone, dun, dun, dun, dun, minor third, minor third, major third. And that's really interesting. And I couldn't necessarily find a single answer to what that is. Were you thinking major third, major third, minor third? You know what? I'm not classically trained.

And sometimes that makes it better. Because even if you listen to, yeah, I think the worm is a little out. A little out. But it works. The worm? Yeah, the worm is like the high melody in the chorus. But I think it's the little out. It's not, it's right in the middle.

Yeah. Between and out. Yeah. And that's because I don't, I don't know classical. So I'm not, I don't have to fit into that. Oh, if I don't do it this way, it's not going to be right. I just go off a feeling. Yeah.

Just like Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder and the grace. Sometimes I think I've heard of Richard Franklin or one of them say like, it might be out, but it sounds good. It feels good. You know what I mean? To that context. I'm so glad you're saying this because not only do we strongly support that on the show, but we talk about that across all,

we talk about everything from Roy Ayers to like, you know, electronic music. Ironically punk. To punk rock music, to blues, where a lot of what is sort of the European classical tradition doesn't really fit and the rules are wrong, but this music is our favorite music. We think it's better. Like we love Bach, it's great, it's fine. But I'm not pulling it up on my phone and listening to it in the car.

Right, right. much as I'm listening to your music and popular music and current music. Don't tell him this man to turn Bach into a hip-hop classical. I love John Baptiste right now. The way he's that classical, the way he's flipping that is insane. Blending it all together. So just to sort of get to where I, what I think is happening in this song is that it is an implied Phrygian scale until you get to that major third.

And I think it's a C-diminished scale. I think you're playing a C-diminished scale. But it could be a super-locrean scale. And it was fun for me to kind of come up with these theories. And the answer in music theories, it doesn't matter. It sounds good. Or feels good. And it feels good.

And that's what it matters. But interestingly, using this kind of like classical academy language, you're doing really complicated, sophisticated stuff based on your instincts. Right. Which I really love. Maybe it's in my ancestors somewhere. It did some of this. Because everything your ancestors did is storing you.

It's in your DNA. You can unlock it. but you just got to figure out how to unlock it. Or sometimes it just starts to come out. So let's get back into it. The string quartet version of Get Low we've now played, which we've got to make a string quartet remix of the song now that we've heard it like that.

So there's also these synths in the higher synth section. I'll just play them one at a time and layer them. This one is the bell. Happy. That's the happiness. And that bell is called childlike. It is very innocent and childlike. A childlike.

Naive. Yes. That was also a belt That was a choice That was used in a lot of Crunk tracks Like It's because it's like you were talking like horror movie

Sound like the little kid is coming to get you Like you don't believe the innocence A little kid's gonna kill you In the hole riding the little bike in the shining You know what I'm saying? Don't be fooled by that little kid Right The innocence is not to be taken seriously

And then you have the worm you're talking about The worm sound Which is like a counter melody I'll play it against the other ones And that's from I'll bring in the beats Yeah, when you bring in the beat It just takes it to another level

It's like, wow I think the straight high hat It works with all of that music Because the music is busy Yeah, and it keeps it rooted musically It keeps it rooted Yeah, it's just the let's keep on tempo here

Yeah, it's locked in The high hat and drums Trying to be all extra It would actually confuse things It's bringing everything too. It anchors everything. Yeah. It anchors everything.

And then finally you have this whistle sound. And that's trying to be like party up. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Totally. By the way, I just thought it was a whistle. But now I hear it and it sounds like...

It sounds like someone's hitting... It's a sample whistle because it's the same every time. It's in the... That's in the keyboard. That's in the Triton. One of the presets on the Triton keyboard. They had like a percussion section. And that's where...

Like the whistle don't even need... to be in the song. Doesn't really need to. But it creates energy. Yeah. It creates energy. Something you just played was that horn. I put all the bass content together.

Let's double back to that now. Let's double back to that because I think those horns are important. Those feel like big tubas. You know what I'm saying? Like you feel like, oh, I'm going to see the Famu Rattlers, you know, take the field and they're going going to be playing and get low, you know? Right, right. Okay, so let's build on the cellos from before.

I'll bring in one brass. That's a lot of instruments. One layer of brass at the time. You got to what going on here. But they're all doing. all working, they're all in unison. They're all doing, I think there's three different parts. So to your point, that's why they're not conflicting, they're not causing cacophony. So here is one of the brass parts.

Playing a clave. Yeah, that's marching band all day. That's all the day marching band. One, two, that's your one, two, three. That's your classic clave rhythm, which is mirrored in this other bass. Brass line. It sounds, you hear the breath, right? I feel like you hear the breath.

But that's definitely coming out of the keyboard, right? It's just a sampled. But it's sampled from an actual brass player. That's probably the Trinity. I probably didn't have Trident yet. Okay. Trinity is another workstation. Yeah.

And then together with the cellos, and then I'll bring in some beats because we love layering. It's the best part, right? That's also the groove. Normally the horns drive, but in this case, the horn is part of the groove. Yeah.

That's like Earth went and fire. Earth went and fire. his horns with groovy, right? It's giving you the syncopation against the anchor of the strict eighth notes and the strict kick drum, like you're saying. Right. Yeah, it's where the groove is coming because that's the thing that's moving, maybe unexpected.

It's kind of rocking back. It's like the horns are like this. Oh, totally. Instead of like, ha! No, it's that marching band thing. Well, it's the clove rhythm. This is a Latin rhythm. It's the classic clave three. One, two, three. But, but, but, like, listen to Bosanova.

You hear, but, that's, that's, that, it's the same rhythm. So this is a Latin rhythm. Damn, I never thought of it like that. But this Latin rhythm, I didn't want to get it in the way of your compliment. Let me just stop talking for a second. What was that you were saying? No, I never thought of that like that.

That is the same rhythm. Because I, what's funny, I used to have a little keyboard and you could hit the different rhythms. It was a lot of it was always a preset, right? Yeah, you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, totally. Your Cassio. Right.

You don't always say it would be like, dung, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Yeah. But, man, I never thought of it like, that is the same kind of, But these rich traditions are intuitive to you because you're a music fan and you're a DJ and as you make music,

you bring in that musical experience. I mean, I think that's most musicians that are outside of the academy. I'm not in the academy. I'm a punk rock electronic music maker. But when I do stuff, I figure out what it is later. And I think that's true of a lot of pop music in general. So it's fun to break it down,

but you don't need to know it to make it. Right, right. It's just cool to know later. It's cool to look back. Yeah, to look back. That's right. I want to talk about these hooks because as we sort of hinted at earlier, your songs, there's so many places that you can chant,

you can sing along. It's almost like black pub music in the sense of like the way that the British will go out at 6 p.m. and get sloshed and have songs that they all know the words to. Like you go out to Atlanta back in the days, we used to go to Buckhead. You know, they tore all those places down. But we used to go to Buckhead and you would just go there and everybody would know how to sing, Duh, dum dum.

Dumb dum. We mostly straightened up for the F. Sounds like a nursery rhyme, right? Like, hey, kids, are you ready to learn your ABCs? Here we go. A. I actually heard that in the beginning of your creation that those dums were at the end of the song.

Yeah, so that was at the end of the song. That was like the vamp out. And my engineer, my mix engineer, Ray C, he chose to put it at the beginning. And I remember going to the studio to hear the mix. And I heard that. I was like, oh, man, that is crazy. I was like, how did you think to do that?

Like, why didn't I think of that? Like, that's amazing. That makes the song even catchier. It catches you from the very beginning. It's the first thing you hear. Yep. It's like, allow me to reintroduce myself. You know, like, the first you hear is,

do-dum, don't, boom, drop. Right. And it's, you know, you know, you know from the very beginning. I thought it was genius. And I was still working with him today. But that's just Kane and his crazy brain. Yeah. He was just doing the nursery rhyme type stuff they were doing at that time.

And that was his way of vamping out the song. I think those dum-da-dums are in the grand tradition of Little Richard's Wap-Babababababab, boom. Which also started off a great song. And there's just something about like just, hey, I don't know how to play the little instruments, but I'm going to just do some instrument sounds. I have a lyric question. 369. Is that an interpolation of the clapping song, or is that just...

Ying Yang just came up with it. So here's what happened. We go in the studio, D-Rock gets there first. So D-Rock, me and the D-Rock are in the kitchen. And he was like, I got it. And he's like, from the window to the wall. I was like, yeah, that's cool. And then Kane, because I'm looking for this, now remind you, this is after whistle while you twerk.

Quirk. All of them kind of nursery rhyme. Hooks that they did, Yinyang Twins did, I was looking for that. So I didn't like it. So I was like, just, you know, and then Kane gets to the studio, and he's like, 36, 9, dance, see, I was like, ooh, let's take that part, use that first, and let's take the other part, use that second. That's the hook.

And then we go. Now at least it's my next question, which is across this track, we got 10 or 12, different, maybe 15 hooks and lines. How do you decide the order of the sequence, the importance when you have all of these these ideas, these vocal ideas. Everything is about the feeling. Do you record it in that order that we hear it, or did you record it maybe out of order,

and then you decide later, wait a second. This is the one to emphasize as a chorus. Well, I knew that that was the chorus, but I think they recorded separately. Like, I think D. Rock might have laid his part first and then Kane laid his part. I can't remember. But I knew, I heard them separately,

and I didn't get it until I heard Kane's part first, because that's what I was, that was the missing piece. And little did I know that, the window to the wall was going to turn it to something 20...

It's so much bigger than damn near half the choruses that were written this century. Why don't we listen to it? Do you want to hear... I would love to hear you can place the vocals isolated vocals because this gentleman brought them generously for us to all hear

and listen to together. This is that exact same section. I'll start with one and then layer it because across this song we have stacks and stacks of vocal to get that crunk feeling. But let's hear how it was before I got crunk in the mix, right?

Let's get that crunk feeling. Let's get that crunk feeling. 369. Damn, she's fine. I'm hoping she gets soccer to me one more time. And roll, get low, get low. And I'll start layering it. Low.

To the window. To the wall. My wall. My ball. My ball. It has to be this tempo. The head nod. The head shake has got to be.

There's so much energy in there, right? It sounds raw. This is what confounds me. Like, he is confounded. If you think about where pop music is in this year, like 2003, the idea that a chorus like that is going to be right there with Britney Spears, I just don't think I would have had the force.

I would have been like, guys, this is an underground club anthem. And I'm not saying you weren't setting out to do an underground club anthem. But like, it's just so weird how it worked out that this song now is just as likely to be played at an all white wedding. You know what I'm saying as any of that Britney Spears stuff It probably gets played more than 98 degrees It probably gets played more than Britney Spears That's what I'm saying.

How could you ever know? You didn't add my vocals on the chorus. Don't I have vocals on the chorus? Let's do it. Yeah, I just thought about it. Little Larry's-in-learned even on his own chorus. Damn. Keep layering.

Mothucker! I got damn! Just accents. Accentuations of their vocals, yes. Does your voice ever hurt? Like, you were like, oh, God, I got a to do Seattle tonight. I'm getting sick.

If I'm getting sick, my voice gives out, but I was just in the studio with La Russell yesterday and my voice. They were just amazed at how I sound exactly like the songs. They were like, when I got on the mic, I was like, yeah. They were like, like, he really sounds like that.

Did y'all hear, did y'all feel that? Because everybody in the studio went like this. It was like a different person showed up. By the way, you have so many choruses in here. Tell me what to play next. Let me see you get low, girl. You scared. scared, which is the one that I like the most.

Can I hear that one real quick? That's the verse, really. That's, I know. It's entirely a verse, but I'm saying it could have been a chorus. All right. It could have been a chorus. It's all called you scared. Yeah.

Shorty crore, so fresh, so clean. I got you forked that question been harassing me in the mind. This bitch is fine. I came to the club about 50 little time. It's going to be the noses like this the whole time. Stank face. I have a question. I have a hard question.

This is a gotcha question. 51. What is the? the actual numerical value of 51? Is it... Like over 100. It's over 100, right? I was going to say 178. That's the number I thought it was. 178? Where'd you get that?

I have my sources. You know, we exaggerate. It's just an over-exaggeration. I was explaining to some people who work at the show. It's a whole lot. I was like, you got to understand that 51 is not like, it's not even 5011. If you said 5011, I'm like,

NARC. No, 5111 just means, hey, it's a lot of times. a lot of times. It's actually 5,011. That's what it actually means. I actually told him it definitely is not 5,011 because it could be just as easily, like you said, it could be 126 or something like that. Yeah, it's over 100, but 50, if you break it down, 511 means 5,11.

Right here, verse 2. Here's the thing. There's like 17 layers of you, but part of the fun is we're going to start small and then layer the whole thing. So here's just one of you. 17 tracks of vocals? Of you. One, two, three.

I mean, 15, 15. Well, it's me and the east side boys. So some, we probably do, we used to go in the mic together. My mistake. You're right. Three of us on one mic, and we record a bunch of tracks. And then I might go in and add a layer just me. So it's clarity for some things.

And then I think I might have layered like Bo or Sam would by themselves too. Absolutely. Of course, you're correct, as you would be. Because there are 17 tracks, but some of them are you alone. Some of them are Sam and Bo and Lil John. It's layered. And you want that clarity online. It's like, let me see you do it.

You want that clarity. I appreciate that. So let's start with you isolated and then we'll bring Sam and Bowen. All right. Let me see you get logga. Drop that ass to the flogga. And here's a bunch of...

Let me see you get loggler. You scared. You scared. You scared. You scared. Hey. Say that ass. Hey.

Hey. Hey. Hey. Back. Back it up. Also a lot of tracks because we have the different parts. Yeah. Like some of them are just one word.

We had a main part. We had the main part. Interacting with the other word. Then we have what we call crunk tracks. Yeah. Crunk tracks is, hey, hey, hey, hey. That's like, that's the people in the club. When the car part is going, hey, hey, hey, hey, that's the crunk tracks.

I think I found the crunk tracks. And backing tracks, you know. You're scared. I can see that some of these sound like what you're saying. So let's see if I can isolate them. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. And then there's these. Hey, say, bang.

Hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, back. Back it up. Visual. It's visual. You see the girl backing you that ass. You really do. Because we literally, we wrote this like, okay, if we say this, what are they going to do?

Like that, but that's how we, when we first did who you wit, did the same thing. When we write this, how are they going to react? These are instructions for the people listening, directives. Do this. Based on the visual vision that you're having while you're in the studio. Exactly. 100%. Before we leave the vocals, I just want to hear one part from the second verse from D-Rock.

Now, take it to the flow. Now, bring your ass over here, hole. And let me see you get low. If you want this dub, now take it to the flow. Now, if your ass want to act, then you can keep your ass where you at. And if your ass want to act, you can keep your ass where you at. You know why he said that. Huh?

You know why he said that. Here's my theory. He saw the coming of the TV and film industry to Atlanta. And he was like, if your ass want to act, keep your ass where it's at. He saw it coming. That's not right. He's in the strip club. Okay.

Not what I was thinking about. He's in the strip club. You want this dub, $20 to get naked in the strip club. You want this dub, take it to the flow. Sometimes the strippers will have an attitude when they come and talk to you to try to get a dance. So that's why he's like, if your ass, you got to act, you want to act, you want to, you know, be whatever, have an attitude. Yeah. You can stay your ass over there.

I'll get another dance. Well, Get Low's influence can't hardly be overstated because I would say from Screamo to all your EDM crossover work on not just like songs like Turbulance with our friend Steve Ayoki. There's also this monster, monster hit known as Turn Down for What? I read somewhere where like that song has crossed the billion mark on YouTube. Yeah, I know we got a billion on YouTube. I think we got over the billion mark on Spotify maybe too. Talking about Gitlo, John, what do you think is the legacy of Gitlo? Why is this song so enduring? I think it captures a time in people's lives where they were feeling good.

The song is directly connected to good memories of them when they were in college, high school, or whatever. And the song has a good feeling, a good energy to it. And it gives us something to do. window to the wall. And people just love to sing. They love to, yeah, they love to sing the sweat drop down. Because in my show, when I perform it, I play the song once. And when it gets to the chorus to the window, I cut it.

The audience takes over. And they sing it loud every single time. And it just shows that like they love to sing the lyrics. Like that's hats off to Kane and D. Rock for creative. something that people are gonna literally seen forever. Yeah. I like to think one day there'll be like a, like when people put their phones or like a lighter up,

they'll be like, to the windows. Like I like to think that they will come. Are there any projects you're working on that you want to plug? Well, I just finished two shorts, new album. That should be coming out soon. I've worked with Lil Nas X recently. Did like, gave him like two joints. I was in with La Russell yesterday.

So we just started working. And we did about five songs yesterday. We're going to get in. do some more stuff. I'm working with some Southern Soul artists. Wow. I'm working with Tony O'O. Amani.

I just gave him a new song. I actually called Snoop yesterday. I got this song for your boy, man. So working with him and just whatever comes around. You know what I mean? And then EDM projects, they just popping up. Like, whoever called me, but I like the beat, I just jump on it. I love it.

You know, so one with just, I just dropped with Hardwell and Sub-Zero project, a brace for impact, I think it was called. So I'm always doing those, but I'm like really getting back into my production real heavy. Working with Too Short recently, I just really died back all the way into getting my production like even crazier. And before that, me and my son were working through the pandemic. We were just in the house, so we just do a bunch of beats together. And actually, RIP Beat King, he inspired me to get more on my beats.

So me and my son did a lot of beats together. And then also me and my homie, DJ Kronick, we produced a lot. of beats together too. So some of that stuff is on a two short project and yeah, just more stuff to come. Before we end the show, we want to play a game with you. It's called What's One Song? Here are the Rules. We'll ask you a question and you'll give us a one song answer. Please answer as quickly as possible. Don't overthink it. All right. 60 seconds on the clock. All right. What's one song that gets you crunk no matter what mood you're in? Turned out for what. What's one song that put Southern hip-hop on the map?

Southern Playalistic Outcast What's one song that you like to meditate to? I listen to a lot of John Baptiste. If you were DJing the big stage of Coachella, what's one song you would open your set with? Shots. What's one song that brings a tear to Lil John's eye? None.

That's a great song. I love none. What's one song that changed the way you produce music? I'd say since it was on the subject, party up. There you go. And what's one song we have to break down on a future episode of one song?

Why don't you do moments in love? Yes. What a great answer. Great answer. In 60 seconds, too. Yeah. Perfect. Moments in love. Hard of noise. Because it influenced so much. So much of what we were listening to. That was played at black

weddings. Absolutely. On the Quiet Storm Radio. Incredible. Made by these three British like classical music and production, you know, people, such an incredible song, such a legacy. And sampling pioneers, let's not forget. I thought Art of Noise was black. You know, I thought Art of Noise was, you know, sounds of blackness.

And no idea of Ardenoise was three white guys. Right. And white woman. The feeling of it. Exactly. It's the feeling. People don't, some people don't realize music is all about feeling. And I think it's because the music now is lacking the human element.

The only human element is the people on top. And even the vocals are, or freaking got effects on it to make them sound too perfect. Oh, I didn't hear any auto tune in the stems of this song. Autotune, yeah, for example. So, like, back in those days, there was real live people playing. People don't realize when it's slightly variations throughout the time. If you play down a whole track, it's not going to be perfect.

And that's what makes it human. Absolutely. So the groove of the art of noise is everything. It's like the feeling it gives you. Like, how could they be British and understand this? What we're feeling in America. It's like Paul Hardcastle's Rainforest. Right.

Which is a song that a lot of black folks, you know, would play on the slow jam. But like we had no idea what he'd even look like. He's not even on the cover of the record. Right. So John, thanks for playing that game and spending time with us. Where can folks follow up with you? Should they follow you on social? Man, you know I'm on Instagram and all that, man.

Yeah, twin. You know what I'm at Twin? You know me on an I-G, twin? Oh, my mom on him. See, that's why I didn't recognize you on this street because that's the character that you weren't playing that character. I know, you came up to him like, a little luxury.

I'm really into your show. Thanks for having you. At Lil John. Yeah, Lil John. L-I-L-J-O-N to be exact on everything. Just six letters, y'all. Yeah. Pretty simple.

Not L-T-L-L-T-N. Not J-O-H-N, no. J-O-N. L-I-L-J-O-N. Yeah! All right, you can find us on Instagram and TikTok. You can find me on Instagram at D-I-A-L-O and on TikTok and on T-I-A-L-O-L-O and on T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-O-R-Y-L-R-Y. You can find me on Instagram at L-U-X-X-U-S-U-R-Y.

And you can also find this podcast at One-Song podcast on Instagram and TikTok for exclusive content. You can also watch full episodes of this show on YouTube and Spotify. Please do that. Just search for One Song Podcasts. We'd love it if you like and subscribe. Also be sure to check out the One Song Spotify playlist for all the songs we discuss in our episodes. You can find the link in our episode description. And if you made it this far, we think that means you like the podcast.

So please don't forget to give us five stars, leave a review, and share us with someone you think would like the show. It really helps us keep it going. All right, luxury, help me in this thing. I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist Luxury. And I'm actor writer-director and sometimes DJ, but proud Atlanta. Dialla Riddle. And this is one song. We will see you next time.

This episode is produced by Melissa Duanya. Our video editor is Casey Simonson. Our associate producer is Jeremy Bimbo. Mixing by Michael Hardman and engineering by Eric Hicks. Production supervision by Razak Boykin. Additional production support from Z. Taylor. This show is executive produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein, Brian Smiley, Eric Eddings, Eric Wohl, and Leslie Guam.