Lil Jon Met Kool-Aid Man For Christmas

Part of the beauty of Christmas music is that it creates a new context. By most measures, Lil Jon is played out. He was one of the architects of crunk in the last 1990s, and he got a second life when he collaborated with DJ Snake for “Turn Down for What” in 2013. Last Christmas though, he sounded relatively fresh on “All I Really Want for Christmas,” a collaboration with the Kool-Aid Man for a Kool-Aid commercial. On TV, Lil Jon still feels anarchic, which made him stand out in this commercial and one for Pepsi with Cardi B. and actor Steve Carell that first aired during this year’s Super Bowl.

According to Entertainment Weekly’s Derek Lawrence:

“I had that track laying around for a while, and then me and Kool-Aid connected and it just felt special,” Lil Jon tells EW. “To see the Kool-Aid man in person, it was like, ‘Wow, this is really happening.’ Fast track, we got 2 million hits off of that in a week. It was just something cool to do; I always wanted to do a Christmas song and then to be able to use a brand figure like the Kool-Aid Man in something was pretty amazing.”