Video Team's Afro-Centric Productions, in association with Legacy DVD Works, will release the highly anticipated Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz American Sex Series on Monday.
Platinum recording artist Lil Jon, the original King O' Crunk, hosts this sex-inspired romp through three cities that features an original soundtrack by Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz.
The release is the culmination of a year of collaborating between Video Team President Christian Mann and Lil Jon, whose mainstream popularity continues to soar.
Mann told AVN.com Monday that he met Lil Jon and The East Side Boyz last February when they were shopping explicit footage they had already shot after the 2003 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo. The group was in LA doing studio work and one of Lil Jon's handlers called Mann "out of the nowhere blue."
"I took the call," Mann said. "… My only knowledge of him was that I had seen pictures of him in The Source magazine that my son had showed me. I remember being struck by what a colorful, sort of funny character he was. He wasn't just a bling, bling gangsta-type of rap guy. He had sort of a different look."
Mann said he wasn't familiar with Lil Jon's music or the "krunk" movement at the time.
"And he walked into my office with his posse and his gold fronts and baggy Atlanta Hawks jersey, his dreads, his pimp chalice and those Elvis Presley glasses, and I said this guy might be fun to market. He reminded me of Flava Flav … I didn't have the sense that this guy would have the hit of the summer," Mann told AVN.com.
As the hip-hop/porn movement was gaining strength, Mann said it was ironic that Video Team, the traditional ethnic powerhouse, did not have a project.
"It just made sense. And with Lil Jon's success over the summer it kind of gave this video new legs," Mann continued. "We augmented it. We liked what he shot. We liked the reality, the club footage from Georgia and we just decided to make it a little more sexual."
Lil Jon, who closed the 2004 AVN Awards Show in dramatic style with his chart-topping anthem "Get Low," takes viewers to Atlanta, Las Vegas and Los Angeles in the video. His visibility is probably at an all-time high. He just appeared at the NBA All-Star Game on Sunday at Staples Center and at the House of Blues on Sunset for a DVD release party on Friday. Meanwhile, comedian Chris Rock, who just did a show in LA, has worked Lil Jon into his material. Lil Jon and The East Side Boyz have won three Billboard Awards, two Source Awards and an American Music Award.
"We shipped to the East Coast last Friday and we far exceeded our normal run," Mann said. "Sales are brisk. This one has reorder legs."
Video Team contract star India leads the cast, performing in the three-way finale in which she rides Wesley Pipes' pipe along with Jada.
It opens with some major league booty shaking inside the Blue Flame Lounge in Atlanta and continues with an orgy and a g/g scene in the Trapeze Swingers Club.
Lil Jon and The Eastside Boyz, Big Sam and Lil Bo, hung out with Too Short in a pimped-out Vegas suite with Ice LaFox and her friend leading to some g/g action in another scene. Lil Jon returns for the finale wielding a crop before Pipes takes over.
"We really gave the fan a feeling of what it would be like to be partying with the King of Crunk," Mann said.
Brooke Ballentyne, who won the AVN Award in January for Best Solo Sex Scene, also performs a solo masturbation scene in an Oriental massage parlor.
The cast also includes Asia Nichelle, Black Cat, Brooke, Devon Michaels, Jade, Kenya, Vanessa Ives, Butch Cassidy, Fire, Daddy and Kev.
Mann said there were no immediate plans for a follow-up volume until he gauges the response to the debut. The busy Lil Jon, meanwhile, is producing the new Usher CD.
Mann said to watch for the DVD extra that features just Lil Jon's music scored to the sex.
