The days of abrasion are seemingly gone in hip-hop — smoothness of various stripes rules the radio, thanks to years of cross-pollination with R&B and pop. For rappers with real tension and grit in their voices, this shift has made for something of a mini-crisis — they’re no longer welcome in their old home.

But necessity is the mother of unlikely collaboration, and rappers with rough voices are increasingly finding dance music to be far more hospitable than hip-hop.

Image The rapper Waka Flocka Flame. Credit... Chad Batka for The New York Times

Nowhere is this clearer than in the late career turn of Lil Jon into a club-music barker. From 2001 to 2004, he was an unavoidable presence on hip-hop radio, the growl louder than all others, but one of the most ubiquitous pop songs of the last few months has been “Turn Down for What” (Columbia), a collaboration of Lil Jon and DJ Snake. A hyperkinetic banger, it’s a logical extension of the songs that made Lil Jon famous, without requiring him to do more than scream the hook as the production zips and swells and purrs beneath him. Here, even though Lil Jon is the star, it’s not the sort of song he could have made on his own — it’s almost dublike in its repetition and skeletal approach. He’s the decoration, the thing that gives the song bite, but he’s not its engine.