68. Lil' Jon – Get Crunk (2004)

Hip-hop was born in New York, and that's where all its big stars came from until the end of the eighties, when California started to challenge its dominance. In the nineties, the hip-hop world was a battle between the East Coast (more serious, artistic and political) and the West Coast (gangsters, bitches and hedonism). Meanwhile, the South established itself and started to challenge them both, with hip-hop that was more danceable, dealt mainly with sex and used lyrics that were even racier. Out of this scene came crunk, a style based on dancehall-like beats, music made mainly with synthesizers, and rap made mainly of exulted shouts. The term "crunk" is a combination of crazy and drunk, and was originally used mainly to describe the feeling of mixing alcohol and weed, and the music gives more or less the same feeling. This style reached the peak of its popularity in the middle of the decade, and raised southern hip-hop to the stature of a serious contender to the crown, to the chagrin of many in the hip-hop community, who regarded crunk as a loud and tasteless debasement of the art-form. The jury is still out.

Crunk intrigued me as another case of merger between hip-hop and dance, but no record I've heard really did it to me, until this one. Lil' Jon is the High Priest of crunk, and this anthemic record makes it somewhat more understandable to me. The heavy synth has a mind-numbing effect, the drum machine enhances the disorientation, and the shouts drown you in the experience. In this mental state, the flow of the rap sounds exactly right, and the rest fits in as well. Give me more records like that, and I too will get crunked.

24. Usher feat. Lil' Jon & Ludacris - Yeah! (2004)

In 2004, something befell American pop, something that merely five year earlier seemed like a distant dream: All top ten spots in the Billboard weekly pop chart were taken by black artists. And the record to top them all, as if by invitation, celebrated the event with a gleeful YEAH!

Usher is the closest thing to Michael Jackson to come out of black pop in the last two decades, a polished entertainer who combines song and dance to create an electrifying experience. He rose to fame in the R'n'B world as a teenager back in the nineties, and after the revolution of the turn of the millennium, he was in the position to take over the pop world. A little after Justin Timberlake turned the spotlight towards the new R'n'B, Usher came along to show everyone how it's really done. Every record he put out that year was a smash hit, a concentrated attack on the charts that was not seen since the days of the Beatles. This is the record that started the onslaught, and it is a showcase to the power of contemporary black music. The production is by Lil' Jon, one of the hottest producers of the time, whose style (known as crunk) combines hip-hop with synth-driven dance; the vocal and moves are by Usher, and he is indomitable; and the rap is by Ludacris, who provides his flow and humor, which always make you feel good. Together, they make your booty go: