Lil Jon

Jonathan Smith (born January 17, 1971), better known by his stage name Lil Jon, is an American rapper, record producer, entrepreneur, DJ and actor. He was the frontman of the group Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz, which he formed in 1997, and they released several albums until 2004. He then went solo and released a new album in 2010 titled Crunk Rock. He was also featured on Celebrity Apprentice during its 11th and 13th seasons.

Life and career

Beginnings

Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, Smith graduated from Frederick Douglass High School in Atlanta. After working as a DJ for Atlanta night clubs, he started working for So So Def Recordings between 1993 and 2000.

Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz

Smith took the stage name Lil Jon and formed musical group Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz with rappers Big Sam (born Sammie Dernard Norris) and Lil' Bo (born Wendell Maurice Neal). The group signed to the Atlanta-based Mirror Image Records and were distributed by Ichiban Records. In 1997, Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz debuted with Get Crunk, Who U Wit: Da Album. It included singles "Who U Wit?" and "Shawty Freak a Lil' Sumthin'", the latter of which came out in 1998. Both singles charted on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart at No. 70 and No. 62 respectively. In 2000, Jon took part in starting up his own label BME Recordings and signed a distribution agreement with Norcross, Georgia-based Southern Music Distribution. There he released his breakthrough album titled We Still Crunk!. Among the tracks on that project was the hit single "I Like Those Girls", which reached No. 55 on the R&B chart and No. 3 on the Hot Rap Tracks chart.

Johnny Depp

John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II (born June 9, 1963) is an American actor, producer, and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor. He rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol.

Since then, Depp has taken on challenging and "larger-than-life" roles, starting with a supporting role in Oliver Stone's Vietnam War film Platoon in 1986, then playing the title character in the romantic dark fantasy Edward Scissorhands (1990). He later found box office success in the fantasy adventure film Sleepy Hollow (1999), the fantasy swashbuckler film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) and its sequels, the musical adventure film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), the fantasy film Alice in Wonderland (2010) and voicing the title character in the animated action comedy western Rango (2011). He has collaborated on eight films with director and friend Tim Burton.

Depp is regarded as one of the world's biggest film stars. He has gained worldwide critical acclaim for his portrayals of such people as screenwriter-director Ed Wood in Ed Wood, undercover FBI agent Joseph D. Pistone in Donnie Brasco, "gonzo" journalist Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, cocaine kingpin George Jung in Blow, author J. M. Barrie in Finding Neverland, and the Depression Era outlaw John Dillinger in Michael Mann's Public Enemies. Films featuring Depp have grossed over $3.1 billion at the United States box office and over $7.6 billion worldwide. His most commercially successful films are the Pirates of the Caribbean films, which have grossed $3 billion; Alice in Wonderland which grossed $1 billion; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which grossed $474 million; and The Tourist which grossed $278 million worldwide.