Lil Jon
Crunk's king — jeweled goblet, dark shades, dreads, and a three-word vocabulary delivered at maximum volume. Jonathan Smith came up through Atlanta's rap scene and spent the mid-2000s making the loudest, most fun records on the radio. He didn't just ride the decade; he supplied its energy.
Lil Jon formed Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz in 1995 with Big Sam and Lil' Bo, and their 1996 single "Who U Wit?" is credited with bringing the word "crunk" into hip-hop currency. The 2002 album Kings of Crunk built the throne, and in 2003 "Get Low" with the Ying Yang Twins carried the sound out of Atlanta clubs and up to #2 on the Hot 100 — crunk had gone fully mainstream.
Then came 2004. He produced Usher's "Yeah!" — twelve straight weeks at #1, Billboard's year-end #1 song of 2004, and a Grammy for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration — plus Ciara's "Goodies," and dropped Crunk Juice the same year. Dave Chappelle's shouted three-word impression of him ("WHAT?" "YEAH!" "OKAY!") became a national catchphrase, and Lil Jon leaned all the way in, turning up on Chappelle's Show himself. "Snap Yo Fingers" hit #7 in 2006 to close out the reign.
He never really left — 2013's "Turn Down for What" with DJ Snake went 8× platinum and handed a new generation the same instruction his whole catalog had always given. But the goblet-and-shades years of 2002 to 2006 are the ones burned into memory.
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Usher — Confessions
Usher's 2004 album that opened with 1.1 million copies sold its first week and owned every school dance for the next year. "Yeah!" with Lil Jon and Ludacris became the crunk-and-B blueprint, and Confessions proved Usher was untouchable at the peak of 2000s R&B.
"Drop It Like It's Hot" by Snoop Dogg ft. Pharrell
Tongue clicks, a skeletal beat, and total confidence. The Neptunes stripped hip-hop down to almost nothing in 2004, and it became the biggest rap song of the decade — and, incredibly, Snoop Dogg's first #1 ever.
Ciara
The First Lady of Crunk&B. Ciara arrived in 2004 with "Goodies" and a run of singles that owned school dances for half a decade — icy vocals over crunk beats, and choreography so sharp the music-video channels basically belonged to her.
Kris Kross
Two Atlanta kids in backwards clothes spent eight weeks at No. 1 with "Jump" — at 13, charting at an age no hip-hop group had matched. For one glorious stretch of 1992, half the playgrounds in America turned their jeans around.