Crunk is one of those words that sounds like what it is. The word is probably a contraction of “crazy drunk,” but even if you don’t care about etymology, you can instantly understand it as a call to unleash your inner beast. Crunk evokes the instinctive or involuntary things in life that make you go unngh. No songs yet about shitting (surely it’s just a matter of time), but plenty of sex and violence, with the borders between the two blurred. In crunk, the nookie is rough and TLC-free, and the violence is nearly voluptuous.

Although he didn’t coin the term, Atlanta crunk mogul Lil Jon has turned it into a transmedia empire encompassing everything from CRUNK!!! energy drinks to porno movies to pimp cups. And his productions for Ying Yang Twins, Petey Pablo and Usher have propelled this regional underground sound into the mainstream. One couplet in “Throw It Up” from Lil Jon’s previous album, 2002’s double-platinum Kings of Crunk, distills the genre’s worldview into four words: “fuck him/fuck her.” But “Get Low,” that album’s monster single, was the true Crunk manifesto. Linking base desires and bass frequencies, it featured the immortal couplet “‘til the sweat drop down my balls/’til all these bitches crawl.” We’re talking caveman-dragging-the-wife-by-her-hair stuff here, reptile-brain business, life reduced to appetite and aggression, testosterone and adrenalin.

In “Get Lower,” a skit on Lil Jon’s new album, comedian Chris Rock offers a hysterical parody of crunk’s abasement shtick: “get under under, get lower than a pregnant ant’s belly.” Which does beg the question: How can music with such bass-ic premises as crunk actually progress?

Crunk Juice doesn’t break much with Lil Jon’s winning formula. Rather, staying true to the genre’s binge approach to pleasure, it offers an intensified version of the sound. So the beats hit harder, the bass is extra gnarly, the lyrics surpass previous peaks of lewd-icrousness and the rowdy choruses are even more blearily belligerent.

Along with synth riffs modeled on house and techno (music Lil Jon first encountered at strip clubs, not raves!), these growly baritone chants are the producer’s hallmark. Layering a single voice to sound like a mob, he achieves an effect as in-your-face as a blast of bad breath.

“In the Club” is the best example of the Lil Jon sound, featuring one of those signature whistling synth refrains as heard on Usher’s “Yeah!” Crunk Juice’s two other killers are less typical. On “Aww Skeet Skeet,” girlish voices chant the X-rated chorus (“skeet” is crunk-speak for ejaculate) over rumbling go-go percussion, like some porno version of the Tom Tom Club. Slow and stealthy, “Da Blow” is a stoner’s anthem — the icy sharpness of the synth melody and the heart-palpitating drumrolls evoke the paranoia zone you enter after one toke too many.

The most strikingly novel aspect is Lil Jon’s newfound superproducer clout, manifested by the many famous guests: Snoop Dog, Nas, Ice Cube, Pharrell Williams, Ludacris and Usher (on the inevitable, cloying ballad “Lovers & Friends,” a transparent and somewhat incongruous attempt to make nice to the ladies). There are even guest producers on a couple of tracks. The Neptunes offer the nothing-special “Stick That Thang Out,” while Rick Rubin builds on his recent “99 Problems” comeback with “Don’t Fuck Wit Me,” which pivots around a jagged metal riff in classic Def Jam circa-1986 style.

Crunk seems to favor brawn over brains. But it’s not so much stupid music as music whose purpose is to stupefy. The bass is a rolling cloud of concussive low-end, a doom-boom sound that’s literally stunning.What’s slightly eerie about Lil Jon’s music is how, for all the party-up intent, the actual feel of the tracks is dirgelike. It’s a vibe we’ve encountered in rap before, with 50 Cent’s oddly joyless “In Da Club” and the bleak nightlife treadmill depicted on Jay-Z’s “Do It Again.”

Tilt your ears just a little, and the voices on this album can start to sound like people in agony, rather than in the throes of pleasure. For just a moment, Crunk Juice summons to mind a Dirty South update of Dante’s Inferno — sinners tormented according to their vices, gorging on chicken and beer, lap dancers and weed, until gluttony becomes its own kind of punishment. Although the hallucination passes quickly, and the record becomes “fun” again, this much is clear: Crunkonia might be a great place to visit, but it’s not somewhere you’d want to live.

DOWNLOAD: “Da Blow,” “Don’t Fuck Wit Me,” “Aww Skeet Skeet”