Shorty. Bling. Dime piece. Whoa! Celly. Pimp. Chips. Whips.
Need a translator? Thought so.
Girlfriend. Flashy. Cute girl. Incredible! Cell phone. Ladies’ man. Money. Cars.
Chances are you’ve heard it, thanks to the phenomenal crossover influence of hip-hop culture.
Hip-hop comes of age this year — it turns 21 this fall — but for the first time since it hit radio, it’s exploding into every culture, reaching all ages.
Last year, hip-hop and R&B sold a combined 263 million albums and singles, and led U.S. music sales.
Together, they outrank alternative, pop and country.
For some, hip-hop slang is becoming everyday language.
Best-selling dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster and Random House Webster annually update their reference books to include the latest words.
This month, Random House’s 2000 edition will include more than 300 new words and phrases, such as the hip-hop driven “my bad!” and Merriam-Webster’s latest will include “big-time.”
Of course, they’ll be missing how young people are communicating today. By the time an expression is in print, it’ll be played out.
Yet the hip-hop slang invasion comes with a cloud of confusion and fear, linked to a materialistic culture that is most often equated with guns, violence and misogyny.
Parents wonder whether what they’re hearing is just about being cool or about embracing dangerous things.
That’s what concerns Vera Griffie of Farmington Hills, Mich., whose son, Mike, likes hip-hop music. Griffie doesn’t care for the genre too much herself, but says that every generation has different tastes than their parents.
“I do believe that music is very influential, like the lyrics. The message can have an effect on children and their behaviors,” Griffie says. “But I think my son has enough grounding with his upbringing that he would refrain from it being too influential. He has good judgment.”
What makes a phrase cool is all in who uses it. Current slang comes from popular recordings such as Jay-Z’s “Big Pimpin’,” Next’s “Wifey” and TLC’s “No Scrubs.”
Chad Seaborn, 18, says that using slang helps people fit in. The Central Michigan University freshman says that he and his friends pick up slang from hip-hop music and music videos.
“Everybody has a little bit of slang in them,” he says. “A lot of times, I’ll listen to a song more than once. Then after a while, I’ll start to catch on to what they’re saying. Or if they’re on TV, then I can catch on to what they’re doing. I can pick it up after a while.”
Those performers are here and now, so what they say goes. But even rappers like Will Smith — who lacks the dangerous edge that most hip-hoppers have — can make a word unhip. When he started using words like “jiggy” (Puff Daddy and Mase used it in a song before he did), the words became a sign of uncoolness.
And then there are the words that forever stay on the cool radar, and others that get new meanings, such as “pimp.” Baby Boomers still think of a pimp as a man who solicits clients for a prostitute. For kids today, being called a pimp is a good thing. It means that you know what it takes to attract a woman or a man.
Jay-Z, a popular hip-hop crossover artist, is helping to put the word out in the mainstream. His latest single, “Big Pimpin’, “peaked at No. 18 on Billboard’s Top 100 and is holding steady. This month, the Hughes brothers — who gained national attention with the 1993 hit movie “Menace II Society” — opened “American Pimp,” a documentary that puts the urban pimp into a historical context.
Look closely and it’s easy to see where the new slang words originated.
Gambling chips, for example, represent money, so “chips” means money. When drivers turn their steering wheels really hard and fast, it’s called “whipping the steering wheel.” Somewhere along the line, that phrase turned into cars being called “whips.”
Some current slang has old-school roots, like the jazz-originated term “cat,” a word for a person that is sprinkled throughout hip-hop lyrics.
But most slang only lasts for a while.
That’s why dictionaries are careful about the words they include, says Arthur Bicknell, a publicist for Merriam-Webster’s.
“We have to make sure that the word has longevity and is not just a general passing fancy,” Bicknell says. “The very nature of slang or street talk is that it is just that. As soon as it finds its way into print, it’s no longer cool, because everybody is using it. It may very well disappear. That’s the type of thing that we have to be careful with. And that’s why we look for the print usage in a reputable print document.”
Print usage?
Reputable document?
That’s what makes a word so uncool, says 17-year-old Mike Griffie. Staying on top of the cutting edge of hip-hop slang makes you stand out and fit in, once you learn the words.
“Usually, you get a general idea just from the context. Like if a friend asked me if I had the whip tonight, I’d ask them what it means and then they’ll say the whip means the car,” Mike says.
What makes this controversial now, says Jeffrey Ogbar, is that expressions from rap — a primarily black, urban genre, sometimes with gangsta connotations — are being picked up by young, white suburbanites. Ogbar, an assistant professor of history at the University of Connecticut, teaches a class on hip-hop politics and youth culture.
“In the 1950s, teenagers used terms and slang that their parents weren’t used to. But with this generation, you have the same thing all over again, but the difference is that this is rooted in the black idiom. And that can raise some eyebrows,” he says.
“I think there’s a particular appeal that African-American culture and vernacular has in the United States. From ragtime, to jazz to rock ‘n’ roll to the Motown sound, there has long been this fascination with African-American youth culture. Part of that appeal has the rebellious aspect of it all. The appeal is that it’s different and it’s exotic.”
Hip-hop culture might be different, but it can’t change one thing: As Will Smith once said (though he went by the Fresh Prince back then), parents just don’t understand.
“I usually talk to my parents so they can understand me. I know if I talk to them with slang they wouldn’t understand it,” Chad Seaborn says.
Mike says he’ll sometimes clue his mom into the slang that he uses.
“Like sometimes I’ll say jokingly to her, `Get off my tip,’ ” he says, meaning “Leave me alone.”
“And then sometimes I’ll hear her saying that to other people. And I’m like, `Mom. No.”‘
