On signing to Atlantic, Juvenile criticized his former label Cash Money for not giving him enough creative freedoms as well as FEMA over his perceptions over their handling of Hurricane Katrina. Its first single was " Animal", followed by " Rodeo", "Get Ya Hustle On", "What's Happenin'", and "Way I Be Leanin'" featuring Mike Jones, Paul Wall, Skip, and Wacko. Production began in May 2005, most of it being done at a Holiday Inn hotel room in New Orleans. In 2006, Juvenile's album Reality Check debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, being his first number-one album. Thus, he moved to Atlanta to live until the spring of 2006, when he moved back to New Orleans. In the aftermath of the hurricane, he worked with fellow New Orleans rapper Master P and other hip hop artists to raise funds and supplies for the victims of the hurricane. However, Juvenile's Slidell, Louisiana home was damaged but not destroyed in Hurricane Katrina near the end of the summer. In June of that year, he performed his song "Booty Language" from the soundtrack to the film Hustle and Flow at a party in West Hollywood, California. In 2005, Juvenile and his UTP crew went on to create the hit song "Nolia Clap", and Juvenile was able to use this as leverage in getting a new deal for himself and UTP at Atlantic Records. It contained the number-one hit " Slow Motion" featuring Soulja Slim, which topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart on the week of Aug, being the first number-one hit for both Juvenile and Slim, who died in November 2003. Juvenile returned to Cash Money in 2003 to release Juve the Great. The next month, he was sentenced to 75 hours of community service for a fight outside a nightclub in Miami, Florida from 2001. In January 2003, he was arrested in New Orleans on drug charges.
In the summer of that year, he was arrested for assaulting his barber over charges that the barber was bootlegging his music. Juvenile left Cash Money Records in 2002 to join a new label UTP Records. Two more albums under Cash Money were released, Tha G-Code in 1999 and Project English in 2001. In 1999, capitalizing off Juvenile's popularity off 400 Degreez, a remixed version of Being Myself and reissue of Solja Rags were released. In January 2005, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans denied the case. However, there came a dispute over who owned the rights to the title of the song, as another New Orleans performer DJ Jubilee claimed that Juvenile's song sounded very similar to a song of his. Thus, Juvenile's next album 400 Degreez was released in 1998 with joint distribution by Universal Records, spawning his first single " Ha" and later "Get Me My Brusket", both of which topped the Billboard Hot 100 and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts. In 1997, Solja Rags, Juvenile's debut with Cash Money Records, became popular among underground rap audiences. After beginning his rap performing career in his teenage years, Juvenile released his first album Being Myself in 1995, giving way to the southern " bounce" rap style, similar in nature to the sound that Master P and No Limit Records were performing at the time.