Up, up, up. It’s not just the refrain of LoveRance’s hit record, it’s also the direction his career is headed. The 24-year-old San Francisco rapper is contending for rookie of the year with his strip-club smash “Up!” The song helped him land a deal with Interscope, and even found its way on to the upper reaches of Billboard after 50 Cent, Young Jeezy and T.I. have dropped verses on remixed versions. Call it fate, and maybe it is: LoveRance says that the track was rescued from the dustbin. “The song is like two years old,” LoveRance tells BET.com. “At one point in time I gave up on the song and I stopped pushing it.”

In an unusual backstory for a song so explicit, Rance explains that a family tragedy inspired him to give “Up!” another shove skyward. “Around my birthday one of my uncles had passed,” he recalls. “I was at his funeral and remembered how his life was always very positive. He was always one of the family members that would ask me how’s music going. He was a music teacher. So sitting at the funeral and hearing so much positive stuff about him as far as music goes, it had me thinking about my career. Later on that night it was my birthday party, and my DJ played the record and the whole club just went crazy. After I was like, I’m going to try and push this song one more time. And now I’m here with it. So shout out to my uncle Johnny — he definitely inspired me to give it another go round.”

But Rance explains that the song’s initial inspiration was much more pedestrian and expected — women hanging in the studio, to be exact. “One day me and the homies were chilling in the studio working on some music and we had two lady friends in there chilling,” he recalls. “One of them was dropping knowledge on how she felt about certain guys beating around the bush when it comes down to sexual acts. She wanted a dude to get straight to the point. After she dropped that, I was like, let’s see if we can make a song from that. The homie IAMSU made the beat and dropped the hook and the rest is history.”

The rapper looks to make more history when he drops his mixtape Freak of the Industry later this summer and then his as-yet-untitled debut album, which he hopes to have ready for a fall release. He’s already got collabos with Omarion and producers Cool and Dre in the can, and now he’s got his sights on two bigger, more unexpected fish. “One artist I definitely want to work with is Alicia Keys,” he says.” I haven’t heard a record from her in a while. And also I’d love to work with Master P. That would be crazy because it’s out the box, and just to see what we would come up with.”
But in the meantime, Rance says he’s going to be plenty busy — racking up frequent flier miles to push “Up!” to the next level. “I’m definitely trying to travel to every strip club in America to see the reaction,” he jokes.

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(Photo: Courtesy Myspace)