This week I promised to write about women in urban music. I was halfway through my post when my neighbors do what they always do at ten at night – blast music and sing along quite terribly for a solid hour or so until the RA knocks on their door and asks them to “quiet down a bit.”

My lovely neighbors usually play different songs every night, but the same song always manages to sneak into their various playlists.

Mo Bamba by Sheck Wes.

I went from never hearing this song to hearing it almost every day since arriving at Penn State. It’s not just the neighbors playing it; it’s everywhere. It’s played at every concert, every party, and even the kid with the speaker backpack blasts the song at full volume. This 3-minute song has unwillingly become the theme song to my first-year college experience, and it’s not just me. Scrolling through my social media, I see snaps and videos of other first-year students at other schools partying with this song playing in the background.

It feels like it’s widespread epidemic of college students partying to this song. Mo Bamba did get its mainstream push during the same time that school started so it’s natural that concerts and parties would play music that’s “hot” at the moment. But what makes this song so appealing to college students that it became an anthem for all social gatherings? What about it appeals to impressionable college students?

I have two ideas.

Firstly the beat. Mo Bamba has this high energy beat that makes you want to jump around. If you want to get a party started this is the song. People automatically start moving to the beat even if they don’t know the lyrics. It pulls people in somehow and refuses to let them go until the song is over and even then, the intensity of the song is still in you.

Secondly the lyrics or more specifically the flow. Mo Bamba is one of those extremely simple SoundCloud tracks with no meaning and easy to remember song lyrics. This appeals to college students because you don’t have to put much thought into singing it. Just say that same thing over again and you’re good. The flow of the song helps to contribute to the high energy feeling created by the beat. The lyrics are rapped in a screaming mantra/chant like manner. Screaming it is the only way to effectively rap the song, which only contributes to the intensity of the song.

Mo Bamba although extremely annoying and irritating has all the right elements to make it the perfect college party song. The intensity is what many college students are looking for when going out. It’s the perfect song to jump around and scream along to with a hundred other students.

As much as I try to dismiss this song, I can’t help but bob my head and hum the lyrics when I hear it playing. Whether I like it or not this is the song that when I hear it in my 30’s I’m going to be instantly transported to my first semester in college.