Songfacts®:

• Sean Paul teams up with Keyshia Cole on "(When You Gonna) Give It Up To Me," a song that finds him in his familiar role of lover man; Cole plays the part of the lady who is suitably impressed.
  
  The song first appeared in December 2005 without Cole on Sean Paul's 2005 album The Trinity under the title "Give It Up To Me." The version with Cole is the one the was released as a single. It came out in June 2006 and went to #3 in the US that September.
• The Keyshia Cole version is featured in the 2006 movie Step Up and used on the soundtrack. The music video incorporates scenes from the film, which stars a pre-Magic Mike Channing Tatum as a street dancer trying to get with the more refined Jenna Dewan. They got married in real life in 2009 but split up about 10 years later.
• Sean Paul admitted to Heeb Magazine that this song "is about, yeah, give me some pu--y." He added: "But it's about saying it with tact. It's not wilin' out. It can play on the radio. I'm thinking about my son when I am writing this too, you know."
• Sean Paul was on a hot streak when this song was released. He's from Jamaica but stormed the globe in the early '00s with this dancehall hits "Gimme The Light" and "Get Busy." He's the most successful Jamaican artist of all time on the US charts.
  
  Keyshia Cole was a newer artist; she released her debut album, The Way It Is, in 2005 and had her biggest hit in 2007 with "Let It Go."
• The song was produced by Donovan Bennett, who wrote the song along with Sean Paul, his brother Jason Henriques, and his collaborator Nigel Staff. Bennett, a Jamaican producer, also worked on Sean Paul's Rihanna collaboration "Break It Off."
• A TikTok dance craze sparked a 2026 revival for "(When You Gonna) Give It Up To Me," propelling the track back into global heavy rotation. The resurgence was fueled by a mix of Avatar: Fire and Ash hype (the song is often used in Avatar edits) and Y2K nostalgia, with creators pairing the song with iconic 2000s film clips and pop-culture moments. This viral momentum successfully pushed the throwback hit back onto international music charts.