JONATHAN SMITH, BETTER known as Lil Jon, hip-hop’s King of Crunk, has just knocked out a set of pullups at Venice’s Muscle Beach in Los Angeles. It’s early November, and the 53-year-old Grammy winner steps toward a photographer’s lens, hits a double-biceps, then drops into a full-torso flex like he’s chiseling the air. Face tight. His intent heavier than the weights.
This isn’t Lil Jon from the early 2000s. That Jon had you “Snap Yo Fingers,” “Get Low,” then toast it with “Shots” before asking the only question that mattered back then: “Turn Down for What?” This Jon wants your mind right. Therapy. Meditation. Eat better. Get off your ass and move.
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Lil Jon in 2003.
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Lil Jon in 2019.
In those days, Jon’s daily menu included wings, pizza, fried fish, and subs that he’d wash down with a bottle of tequila by himself, plus vodka, beer, and sometimes Jägermeister. Two decades ago, he hovered in the high 20s for body fat and struggled to pull T-shirts over his protruding belly. Today, he’s at 5.4 percent body fat and a couple months off a third-place finish at his first bodybuilding show, the Labor Day Muscle Beach Championship.
This transformation is fresh. Jon originally wanted to tighten up for the 2024 Las Vegas Super Bowl, where he hit the stage with Usher and Ludacris. He recruited friend–and–trainer Jay Galvin, and they started training with the Super Bowl three and a half months away. For Jon, bodybuilding means the classics, Arnold Schwarzenegger style. “I’m not into flipping tires and running with sacks on my back,” he says. Instead, he builds his physique with calisthenics—pullups and pushups—and iron, lots of iron. Presses, curls, and compounded moves. In his own words, “simple, old-school bodybuilding.”
Joao Canziani
Because of Jon’s schedule, “he only physically worked out for six weeks,” Galvin says. “But he ate clean the entire time.” Jon keeps his diet brutally simple: rotisserie chicken, chicken breasts, sea bass, snapper, and rice. Dealing with travel used to be tough, but Jon found a nutrition hack: Middle Eastern food. “It’s always going to be healthy, a lot of grilled,” he says.
He stuck to cardio while on tour, kept his diet tight, and showed up shredded for the Super Bowl. “Jon got a lot of comments about how great he looked,” Galvin says. That bump of momentum pushed him. Galvin had competed in the 2024 Muscle Beach Championship and told Jon he could’ve won the Masters division. Jon didn’t hesitate. “Let’s train to do it,” he said.
Still, somewhere between the tequila, the ill-fitting T-shirts, and the pressure to be Lil Jon every night, Jonathan Smith had faded away. That discovery forced a reset. He delved into meditation and produced three guided-meditation albums, which are approaching a million streams on Spotify alone. He also underwent a full medical checkup and colonoscopy, which revealed inflammation in his gut (and miraculously not his liver).
Then came Ramadan. Jon converted to Islam in 2024 and fasted from March 1, 2025, through March 30, 2025, sunrise to sunset. The impact on his body amazed him. “After Ramadan, my blood work came back impeccable, the best I’ve ever had,” he says.
Joao Canziani
This Jon isn’t just a new body, but a renewed brain. A new rhythm. His mix of lifting, fasting, and quieting his mind transformed Jon from the King of Crunk to a man taking full custody of his health. That’s why this story matters: not because a celebrity got jacked, but because one of hip-hop’s loudest voices chose, finally, to listen to his own body whispering for help. And then he did something about it.
This story appears in the Winter 2026 issue of Men’s Health.
Milo Bryant, CSCS, is a California-based trainer and an award-winning journalist.