Various Artists - Crunk Hits

Genre hip hop Publisher TVT Records External Links TVT Records

Oversize athletic jerseys, buffed-to-a-shine platinum grilles, jewel-encrusted chalices, minimalist keyboard shivs and squishes, ultra-misogynistic updates of early 90s southern classics like "Whoomp! (There It Is)," the repurposing of the upper-crust, white concept of "skeet shooting" to refer to agitated male ejaculation - what's not to love about crunk? Or more accurately, if you don't love crunk, do you hate America? There's been much editorializing over the last few years about how Americans love things big - big cars, big meals, big Dick's Sporting Goods franchises - and in some ways, crunk and its 2004 universality seem to reflect who we really are as a society en masse: extravagantly opulent, swaggering hedonists who're always ready to party hard and hoarsely bellow simplistic catch-phrases that happily exploit assorted regional dialects ad nauseum.

But cultural criticism misses the point, and is maybe sorta unnecessary for a subgenre that David Chappelle adroitly lampooned the same year it peaked; the heads'n'hipsters herd has moved on, momentarily, to Houston and its chopped-and-screwed, syrup-soaked hip-hop and associated glossy feature stories. Such is the ever-accelerating speed of pop culture that this movement has already been commemorated with a jewel-cased mini-tombstone that will undoubtedly enliven many a lame-o get-together between now and, say, the start of the 2008 presidential primary season.

Crunk Hits, a lovingly-compiled compendium of the genre's overplayed and relatively obscure bangers, kicks things off with "Yeah!," an Usher-Ludacris pro-cheating ode (containing all three of the Lil Jon soundbites Chappelle built some of his fortune on; by the way, if Lil Jon's crazed party-toasting turns you off, watch out, cuz dude pops up like an ATL bad penny all over this CD) so familiar to the masses that a muzak version currently scores a nationally televised ad campaign, though I can't put my finger on which one right now. Then it's off to the races with 17 - yep, 17, cousin; TVT scored the hinddig so you can focus on raiding your booty-call Rolodex - more jams, ranging from the hypnotically sublime (Ciara's old-school Destiny's Child you-can't-hit-this-attitude-revival "Goodies," riding an irresistible contracting-then-expanding whistle-sample hook) to the rowdy (Trick Daddy's anthemic, Black Sabbath-quoting "Let's Go") to the ingratiatingly annoying (Chingy's cheesy, leering "Right Thurr") to the female-as-self-exploitative-empowering (Khia's intensely graphic thug-how-to sex manual "My Neck, My Back") to the relentlessly catchy (T.I.'s reggae-organ-and-kids-choir girded "Rubberband Man"). Damn. I don't care who you are: this is hedonistic escapism at its bygone finest.