“’Turn down for what,’ then, becomes an existential question of the highest order”

I loved reading this tongue-in-cheek yet ultra-real “Theorizing the Turn Up” piece by Brittney C. Cooper at the Crunk Feminist Collective:

Turn up is both a moment and a call, both a verb and a noun. It is both anticipatory and complete. It is thricely incantation, invitation, and inculcation. To Live. To Move. To Have–as in to possess–one’s being. The turn up is process, posture, and performance — as in when 2Chainz says “I walk in, then I turn up” or Soulja Boy says, “Hop up in the morning, turn my swag on.” Yet it holds within it the potential for authenticity beyond the merely performative. It points to an alternative register of expression, that turns out up to be the most authentic register, because it is who we be, when we are being for ourselves and for us, and not for nobody else, especially them.

Lil Jon’s question “turn down for what,” then, becomes an existential question of the highest order.

“To be black or to be non-white in the West,” concludes Cooper, “is to live in a world that expects us to live in a state of being turned down, unobtrusive, inconspicuous, ornamental. We are to both turn down and tone down.” Well, y’all can guess how I feel about this. Truly impossible to deny a co-mandate that brings Audre Lorde and Lil Jon together. (And, I suppose, The-Dream!) [CFC]