Yup, I'm yet another white rockcrit getting onto the crunk bandwagon late - but bear with me, if you would. My two fave Pazz & Jop comments about crunk each say so much (if different things) about it.

Lil Jon says bend over! Lil Jon says touch your toes! Now shake ya tailfeather! Ho, Lil Jon didn't say to shake no tailfeather!

CHUCK EDDY
Brooklyn, New York

Listening to David Banner's "Lil' Jones" (featuring Bonecrusher) a double-digit number of times, I still hear the chorus as "Is that you, Lil' Jon?" Which makes sense, since Lil' Jon is the - what, black Elvis? - of crunk, bringing it to the (white) masses. Now, crunk ain't nothin' new; Lil' Jon's Get Crunk, Who U Wit: The Album came out back in '97. But akin to '89 being the year of gangsta thanks to N.W.A. (when Schoolly D's "P.S.K." had been released three years prior), 2003 was undoubtedly The Year Crunk Broke.

Lil' Jon I find largely useless beyond the sheer bizarreness of "Get Low" and its various remixes (especially the Merengue Mix!), but Banner's another matter. Take "We Ride Them Caddies" from his latest, MTA2: Baptized in Dirty Water. It opens sounding like a cross between "Planet Rock" and "Tubular Bells," and largely keeps it up. "Gots To Go," featuring Devin the Dude and Bun B, I'm positive rips Loose Ends, and comes off as the first quiet storm hiphop to discuss nut-lickin'. Musically, Banner succeeds where some of his dirty south peers fail, because so much of his record just plain sounds weird - for pete's sake, he remixes Nelly's "Air Force Ones" by adding in huge chunks of metal guitar! And when he's not talking about bitches and hos, he's got some surprisingly astute sociopolitical commentary hiding in the corners. This album improves with each listen, ya heard? [And "Bush," from Mississippi The Album, is downright stellar.]

And another thing about Banner: have you realized how country he is? As Frank Kogan points out here, "the chords [in "Cadillac on 22s," from Mississippi The Album] resemble 'Lay Lady Lay'" - and that's just for starters. Much of Banner's music feels country, akin to the great Roseanne Cash single featuring her late papa Johnny, "September When It Comes" - and maybe moreso. You can nearly smell the Mississippi soil rising from Banner when he raps. He may be working in a completely different genre - nay, idiom, even - from Hank Williams, but he shares quite a bit with him. Think of that the next time you hear him shouting his way through "Like A Pimp."

[Originally posted in a slightly different version at Oh, Manchester, So Much To Answer For.]