Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic

Lil Jon’s brief but galvanizing appearance at the Democratic National Convention, representing Georgia in a musical roll call, may have seemed like a random joy to some viewers. In reality, it was the culmination of a weeks-old viral meme pairing the rapper with vice presidential candidate Tim Walz… and also a bookend to Lil Jon’s 10-year-old get-out-the-vote effort.

The DNC’s surprise appearance by the hip-hop star was the brainchild of two women — political operative Ashley Spillane and Lil Jon’s longtime publicist, Tamar Judah — who approached the White House and the Kamala Harris campaign with the idea of capitalizing on the current convention meme. Campaign officials responded with the idea of featuring Lil Jon in a state-by-state musical roll call, as the only live performer amid a playlist otherwise curated by DJ Cassidy. It turned out to be a bigger hit than even they could have expected.

The meme in question began when TikTokkers and others responded to Harris’ selection of Walz as her VP pick by changing the lyrics of Lil Jon’s “Get Low” from “to the window, to the wall” to “to the window, to the Walz.” Spillane and Judah had worked together on a Rock the Vote campaign a decade ago, changing the lyrics of another Lil Jon hit, the 8x platinum “Turn Down for What,” to “Turn Out for What.” So they got to work figuring out how to turn the viral snippet into something that could actually excite voters… not to mention the delegates themselves. Over the phone with Variety, they laid out the story of how the moment came to be.