Turn down for what? Well, a calm, regulated nervous system for starters.
On Thursday, Lil Jon changed his tune — literally — with the release of his latest album: a collection of guided mediations, all remixes of his biggest hit songs.
The “Get Low” rapper spoke to The Post about the importance of shutting off your brain — plus the remix that made him laugh most, the megastar rapper he’s chatted with about hot yoga with, and future zen collaborations.
This actually isn’t Lil Jon’s meditating debut. Last year he released “Total Mediation” featuring traditional guided meditations with Kabir Sehgal. That was followed by “Manifest Abundance,” which included affirmations for personal growth.
But “Remix Meditation” has a little something extra for the Millennials whose days of getting low in the club are behind them, having traded shots (shots! shots!) for tea, fuzzy socks and an early bedtime.
It features six tracks sharing names with his biggest hits — “Turn Down For What,” “Get Low,” “Lovers and Friends,” “Alive,” “Yeah!” and “Goodies” — in which he soothingly guides the listener through breathing, grounding and manifestation.
This isn’t a gimmick, though. Meditation has helped him for the past three years, and he’s serious about helping others to do it, too.
“[There] was a time in my life where there was lots of stuff going on, and meditation and saying affirmations helped me to get back into a positive mindset when I was drifting away from it,” he said.
“‘Get Low,’ you know, it’s a twerk song. And now we talk about grounding.”
Lil Jon
During his divorce, he’d start his morning with a mug of ginger tea, sitting inside a copper pyramid on his deck to say affirmations and “detach from the world.”
“It helped me to really manifest what I wanted out of life. So it was important to share all of that stuff with people.”
That being said, he did find these pretty funny to record. In “Turn Down For What,” he has listeners visualize turning down the volume in their minds. In “Yeah!” he has us say take a deep breath and say “yeah!” to life.
He reframes “Get Low” as a grounding exercise, encouraging us to feel ourselves “being supported by the Earth under you.” We also chant to ourselves, “Three six nine.”
“I was just laughing inside… and probably on the mic a little bit,” he admitted.
“‘Get low’ and ground — I think that’s the one that was funniest to me,” he added. “Get Low’ — it’s a twerk song. And now we talk about grounding. I saw somebody comment that this is crazy — we went from tearing up the club to hugging trees.”
The best part for him is seeing how much these have struck a chord with fans.
“It’s making it palatable for people that are novices, or just would have never thought to try [meditation],” he said. “People are quite receptive. It makes me feel wonderful that they are, because I’m just trying to do good in the universe.”
It’s certainly doing a lot of good. Studies show meditating has major health benefits, including improved immunity, better aging, and lower blood pressure. It’s also a huge boon for mental health issues like anxiety, stress and depression.
“You just sometimes need to detach from the world and shut your brain off and reset,” he explained. “Some people just go, go, go, go, go, go, go, and they wonder why they’re so stressed out — or they wonder why they got acne, or they wonder why some parts of their body hurt.
“People don’t realize stress manifests in your body, and it’s just good to just take a break and take a breather … I think that’s the only way you can really live a healthy, long life.”
It also gets his creative juices flowing: If the ideas aren’t coming, he just leaves the studio for a bit.
“We’ll go do something to reset, or just go outside and do nothing for for an hour — listen to the birds chirp or smell the fresh air. People don’t realize that’s form of meditating,” he said.
He’s also pushing back at the idea that this is “woo-woo” or not manly, pointing to the way weightlifters take a deep, calming breath before they lift.
“They’re silencing their mind, getting the noise out, and resetting — and then they can focus on lifting that heavy weight. The strongest men in the world actually are meditating,” he said. “So it’s totally absurd to me to just say it’s a girly thing. It’s a human thing we have to do. We have to do it to survive.”
He’s not the only hip hop star into it, either.
“Me and Wiz Khalifa had a talk last week,” he said. “I was telling him that I wanted to do the hot yoga, and he was saying how he does the hot yoga.
“How many hip hop artists do yoga? I’m sure a lot. We just don’t really know about it.”
If you’re already obsessed with the new album, Lil Jon promises there’s more coming. He and Sehgal have recorded content with Deepak Chopra, and he’s chatted with Andre 3000 about a potential collab in the future.
In the meantime, he encourages everyone to give meditation and affirmations a shot.
“You can change your life,” he said. “Everything is in your mind. So if you have a positive mindset and you want positive things to happen in your life, you can achieve that.”
