HGTV's 'Lil Jon Wants to Do What?' premieres Monday, May 2 on HGTV and Discovery+.
Lil Jon is going from producing popular hip-hop songs to something closer to home -- house renovations! The rapper recently sat down with ET's Rachel Smith to share the situation that resulted in his love of design and how his new HGTV show, Lil Jon Wants to Do What?, came about.
According to Lil Jon, a personal project led him on the organic path to HGTV.
"It was about four or five years ago and my house in Atlanta was having a flood for basically a week. We basically had to gut the house," he shared. "[I] went through three contractors and I got into design putting my house together."
The rapper revealed that having seen designer and expert builder Anitra Mecadon on HGTV before, he decided to reach out and get her help on his project.
"I really liked her style and the way she did things," Lil Jon said. "We've been friends ever since and we did an amazing job with my house."
Naturally, the two have taken their friendship to the next level -- working together to help redesign homes on their HGTV series!
Alongside the seasoned designer, Lil Jon will help skeptical homeowners who feel trapped in a boring home find their design wild side.
"Anitra has the trained designer vision and knows all the terminology," Lil Jon explained of the duo's dynamics, adding that they "push the envelope" on many of the home designs. "She has that formal design background and I just have the crazy idea side. So we both throw ideas out and see which ones we land on or which ones we incorporate together and we turn them into a ball."
The GRAMMY-nominated producer admitted that the most challenging aspect of the renovations for other people was making sure they "give them everything that they're asking for" but also shared that the designers wanted to make sure they were giving them "something that's not the everyday cookie-cutter house."
And like all good home renovation shows, Lil Jon admitted that budgeting was often a "major point of contention" for the team.
"Sometimes I want big crazy things and Anitra's always on top of the budget, so, I'm always stressing her out," he said. "But we try to call in favors as much as we can and get people to look out and I think at the end of the day, we always get through."
"For me, it always goes back to where we started and how terrible some of these places look before we come in and do our thing," he said when asked what he loves most about the experience. "Just looking at their faces and feeling their energy and joy and excitement, it makes me feel so good that we are giving them something that is going to be a place where they can make memories with their family."
He added, "That's the absolute joy, to see how happy they are when they see these spaces because they have no idea how these spaces are going to turn out. We present a design, but you don’t know until you see it, until you walk through. And then special things come through in the design because we like custom stuff, so custom things happen that they don’t even know about. So [it's great] to see them surprised at everything [as] they walk around and they're like, 'oh my god, oh my god.'"
"It gets even better with every episode and every build is totally different," he said.
Lil Jon Wants to Do What? premieres on HGTV and Discovery+ on Monday, May 2 at 10/9c.
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