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Producer Series: Polow Da Don

Fifteen tracks from a producer with one of the strangest career shapes in pop: an Atlanta rapper who became a hitmaker, then a talent scout, then largely disappeared from the credits.

Polow da Don's decade

Jamal Jones — Polow da Don — came up as a member of the Atlanta rap group Jim Crow before turning to production, and for roughly five years in the mid-2000s he was among the most commercially potent producers in American music. His records are immediately identifiable: loud, synth-heavy, built on a hook that arrives early and repeats without apology, with a sense of maximalism that fits the ringtone era he dominated.

He also had a genuine ear for artists. He is credited with discovering and developing Fergie as a solo act and worked closely with Lloyd, and his Zone 4 imprint was a significant conduit for new talent.

What to listen for

Usher's "Love In This Club" with Jeezy is the biggest — a number one built on a synth line that sounds like an alarm going off, and one of the definitive club records of its decade.

Fergie's "Glamorous" with Ludacris is the other monument, and a good illustration of his method: a nursery-rhyme hook, a huge low end, and no interest whatsoever in subtlety.

Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda" is the late-period peak, flipping Sir Mix-a-Lot into something considerably more confrontational.

The Lloyd run — "Lay It Down," "Girls Around The World," "Party All Over Your Body" — is the deepest partnership on the list, and Mario's "Crying Out For Me" is the best pure R&B record he made.

Rich Boy's "Throw Some D's" is the one to play for anyone who thinks he only made pop. It is a strange, woozy, regionally specific rap record that became a national hit almost by accident.

Ciara's "Promise," Kelly Rowland and Eve's "Like This," Robin Thicke's "Sex Therapy" and 50 Cent's "Baby By Me" fill out the range.

Go deeper

For the Atlanta production world he belonged to: Jermaine Dupri, Dallas Austin, Jazze Pha and Lil Jon are the other names, and together they explain why so much of 2000s pop has a Georgia accent.

The nationally-scaled contemporaries are Timbaland, The Neptunes and will.i.am — all working the same territory of pop-rap maximalism at the same moment.

And if you want to understand what changed, compare any record here to something from 2015. The shift from this kind of frontal, hook-first production to the sparse, atmospheric style that replaced it is one of the sharpest turns pop has taken.

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