The Atlanta duo of Eric “Kaine” Jackson and Deongelo “D-Roc” Holmes aren’t actually brothers, let alone twins. But since coming together in 1996, they’ve shared a fraternal psychic connection—with a mutual low ‘n’ louche delivery and riotous party-starting energy—that’s made them ideal emissaries for crunk’s Dirty South spin on old-school rap. The Ying Yang Twins’ first chart hit, 2000’s “Whistle While You Twurk”, established the duo’s primary concerns: vintage Miami bass-inspired beats, pole dancers and colourful metaphors for moving one’s derriere. But their appearance on fellow Atlantan Lil Jon’s first blockbuster single, “Get Low”, effectively elevated crunk from a regional movement to the dominant flavour of hip-hop in an early-2000s pop landscape desperate for post-9/11 dance-floor escapism. Jon returned the favour by guesting on the Twins’ 2003 strip-club anthem “Salt Shaker”, a track that forever made seasoning your French fries feel infinitely more dirty. But while the Twins were riding high on one trend, they laid the groundwork for another with 2005’s “Wait (The Whisper Song)”, a finger-snapped shot of heavy-breathing pillow talk that anticipated the minimalist ASMR pop of Billie Eilish by over a decade. As crunk’s commercial reign waned by the end of the 2000s, so too did the Ying Yang Twins’ output. But their 2020 comeback single, “Twerkin in the Mirror” served as a heartening reminder that, no matter how much the world has changed since their early-2000s heyday, the Ying Yang Twins’ commitment to delivering booty-shaking bops in hushed tones endures.