What’s good, Avocado Hip Hop challengers! Today is TURN UP TIME *airhorn noises*

Many of us have heard hip hop and rap songs over the years that have amped up the energy, motivated us, got our heads nodding, made us report to the dance floor at the club, etc, and now it’s time to share one of those songs with the community!

There’s a fantastic article on just what makes a song a ‘turn up’ tune here . Historically, the turn up tune also has its roots in early hip hop, where DJs spinning at parties had certain songs they would drop that would keep the party going and get everyone feeling energized, with good vibes and a killer groove. The earliest iterations of these tunes utilized the sounds of disco and early house music, and DJs embraced a lot of the unprecedented new drum and synth machines in their work.

One particularly fascinating thing about the turn-up song is that these songs are often markedly regional. So a turn up song from, say Houston sounds different than one from Atlanta, which varies from a song by a West Coast artist, etc. And various sounds from various regions of the US have seen their popularity nationwide wax and wane over the decades. From the raunchy sounds of 2 Live Crew and early Salt N Pepa to fun party cuts from the Digital Underground to the rise of southern record labels like No Limit and Cash Money, turn up songs have had a fascinating evolution.

I’m going to go with this banger as a song that makes it hard to sit still, with an infectious swagger and some boastful bars that make turn up songs fun to rap along to-

So here we go-

1.) The tricky/fun thing about this 30 day ‘challenge’ is that you get one choice (see, it’s a challenge!). It doesn’t have to be the ‘best’ choice, or even your ‘favorite’ song-think about it like this: if someone asked you- what’s a ‘turn up’ song?- what song would you suggest? Of course, if you want to mention other songs, it’s fine, but moving on to the second thing-

2.) In order to keep the thread from borking, please limit yourself to one YouTube/media link per post. If someone ‘beats you to it’ and posts a song you would’ve posted, reply under their post saying why you like this song/why it was your pick as well, etc. Let’s not give Disqus a reason to make the thread hard to navigate for those of us listening to the songs!

3.) Let’s keep this as positive as we can. Don’t yuck anyone’s yum, don’t snark on someone who may not be as familiar as others, don’t ‘Um, actually’ people, etc. Ain’t nobody earning any Internet Points out here.