Lil Jon stopped by the Today show to discuss his new memoir.
I Only Shout So You Can Hear Me, co-written with Paul Cantor and published Tuesday by Black Privilege Publishing/Atria, tells the story of Lil Jon’s life and career as the pioneer of crunk music and the creator of hit songs including “Get Low” and “Turn Down for What.” A critic for Kirkus called the memoir “a fun, reflective book from an entertainer who knows how to make people smile.”
Asked why he decided to write a memoir, Lil Jon credited his team with telling him that people needed to see the real person behind his outsized persona.
“The title kind of means…that I’m more complex and deeper than just ‘Yeah!’, ‘What!’, and ‘OK!’,” he said. “People get to hear all about that and hear my life, and how I started, and what I’ve accomplished, and all of the ups and downs of my life.”
In the memoir, Lil Jon writes that he recently learned that the man who raised him as a child was not his biological father. Asked whether he has come to terms with that, Lil Jon said, “It took a while to come to terms with it, but yes, it was crazy to find that out. It was a rumor in my family that I just wanted to put to bed, and I just knew it wasn’t true, you know? And so I embarked on this DNA craziness and madness, and the DNA does not lie. And some things that were revealed to me.…I could not believe it, and it took me a while to get past it.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
