I noticed recently that these exact drum sounds (hihat, openhat, and weird snare-clap) were/are still used in 99% of modern trap songs to this day, nearly 30 years later. They come from Lil Jon's earlier productions, as in 1999-2003. Most copies of these drums you can find online are just sampled from the instrumentals directly or from isolated drums in the songs themselves, but i wanna try to emulate them straight from the source.

This is the best example i can get, from his 1999 album "we still crunk". The hihats and open hats are plain and isolated in the intro. I heard somewhere that one of Lil Jon's first synths was a Nord Lead original, which would make sense. Based on his wikipedia article, he started making music around that same time. And as to my knowledge, the nord lead does indeed have ways to make percussion sounds.

These sounds are very similar to what you could get with heavily edited TR808 samples, but i don't think technology was advanced enough to morph sounds like this back in the late 90s, and Lil Jon is no stranger to crafting his own synth sounds instead of samples (example would be the smash hit "Yeah" by Usher, that iconic lead synth.)

Can anyone tell me how i could faithfully recreate these sounds with some sort of modern VST plugin (for example, nord lead emulation VSTs like Synth1 and discoDSP Discovery)

 

what exactly are you looking for in sounds, are you wanting to know the source of where lil Jon got the drum kits or the Synth Sounds he is know for?

 

They came from the Korg Triton. There is now a VST for it.

 

I think they were shipping them to Atlanta by the full truck load.

 

As far as I remember, usher yeah synths came from virus ti.
He actually used virus in many of his hits.
Their drums came from mpc and they bought them from a company that secretly distributed mpc sound packs such as forat, ,m.b,.g.n.
wow That's a really old story.

 

i somewhere on my old drive has THE LIL JON SOUNDS AND i dont remember where they came from, probably lil jon himself

i have them in soundfont2 format. if you are interested contact me
consists of alot of sounds leads, drum kits, bass, stabs etc

 

I know this a late response, but this Video show tell you everything you need to know about the sounds lil Jon uses.

 

I hate that I can't get V and B Station can't register it anymore..

 

These two old versions of Team Assign still work:

Novation V-Station VSTi v1.7 TEAM ASSiGN | 13 MAY 2011 | 5.55 MB
Novation Bass Station v1.70 TEAM ASSiGN | 20.1.2012 | 7.03 MB

EDIT: This version also works:
Novation - V-Station v2.2 VSTi - 10.04.2013 - 62,3 MB - Working - R2R

 

Last edited: Feb 11, 2025

Oh thanks, disregard my pm

 

speaking of LIL JON X CRUNK