music & video

DJ Snake & Lil Jon – Turn Down For What (2013)

Absurd lyrics, primal beats, futuristic sounds, and a literally groundbreaking video create one of the most interesting singular pieces of music ever.

I’ve been struggling with a short Sidemeat article to tackle lately, and then just now, as I was craving few seconds of bass, it hit me: TURN DOWN FOR WHAT!  Both the song and the accompanying music video manage to illustrate several oxymorons at once, which really speaks to the brilliance of this piece of work.  Is it an accomplished piece of art that has been toiled over and refined and plotted out from the beginning?  Or is it simply a perfect storm of unlikely elements?  Probably the latter, but who knows?  In a word, Turn Down For What is an impeccable composition and the video only reinforces the latter’s ability to step completely outside of the box while simultaneously appealing to everyone inside the box.

Due to the inclusion of Lil Jon, Turn Down For What is all too often misidentified as a rap song.  Even media outlets like TV channels and radio stations couldn’t figure out how to categorize it, and it was frequently thrown in with other hip hop songs.  More correctly, Turn Down For What falls somewhere in the scope of EDM, or electronic dance music.  Despite its superficial resemblance to rap, it draws its greatest influence from techno, house, trance, and other electronic styles.

The music alone is sufficiently captivating.  The loud, resonant bass has been a feature of club music long before rap producers picked up on it, yet it also lends some familiarity to an otherwise “strange sounding” track.  There is a primal, animalistic drive behind the simple beat, juxtaposed against the purely artificial sounds populating the melody.  Having a basic melody to latch onto is a great way to break up the monotony and repetition inherent to pieces of music like this, and DJ Snake uses a different “instrument” to convey this melody in each section of the song.  These high, in-your-face sounds are almost a little jarring, and definitely attention grabbing, and quickly settle into a hypnotic groove that sounds as if it could go on forever.  Musically it’s not all that complex; there’s nothing tricky going on here with keys or time signatures.  Instead, it’s the wonderful mash-up of digital noise that makes it so appealing.  The aggressive record scratching in the final segment hits the hardest, infusing a level of frenetic energy into the piece as it builds towards the climax.

To go along with the music, we have what can only be called shouts, delivered by Lil Jon in typical Lil Jon fashion.  The lyrics are easy to learn, “fire it loud, another round of shots” and the eponymous “turn down for what!”  Ultimately these help punctuate the song and give us a degree of structure, but it’s the sheer absurdity that kicks it to the next level.  I also appreciate the untempered blast of energy it provides.  Without having to decipher its purpose or meaning, we can jump straight into this whirlwind of aural awesomeness.  It doesn’t make a bit of sense, but between the pounding bass and treble-heavy squeals of synth, shouting “turn down for what!” totally works.  It’s a statement, not a question – even more nonsensical.

As if the song wasn’t enough (which it totally is), the video compliments it in an unimaginable way.  It’s very hard not to move some part of one’s body while hearing the song, and the video goes straight for the throat with – how do I put it euphemistically – the male libido.  One fellow in particularly is a complete slave to his loins, who tend to act with a mind of their own and alternately smash and hump everything.  Particularly awesome is when he “converts” the girl, she bucks her hips in sync with the sound effect of a gun cocking, and proceeds to slam down on the guy’s face, straight through the floor.  What the fuck just happened?  Does it matter?  Was it awesome?  I don’t know, no, and hell yes.

The video is absolutely ridiculous but it’s so ridiculous and so completely ridiculous that it transcends its rather juvenile premise to become a piece of art unto itself.  It’s not just some half-assed attempt at uber-powered dicks; no, the directors really embraced the uncontrollable side of humanity’s sex drive.  And they couldn’t have picked a better song, a song with its own raw, driving energy, acting as a parallel  unstoppable force.  Man, it just freakin’ works.

I know it’s easy to dismiss something like Turn Down For What, especially since it seems to lack any sort of meaning.  Sometimes though, music is just music, and the magic here is all about how it sounds.  The video is just icing on the cake, and  I wish more directors would dare to be this adventurous.  Some might see it as tasteless, and it certainly ventures into indecent territory by most standards, but it’s also amazingly weird and totally different.  Turn Down For What may not make musical history, but I can’t help but be drawn to how bizarre it is.

Written by The Cubist