Hip-Hop & AAVE Slang
Hip-hop slang and AAVE urban lingo decoded and credited — meanings, examples, and origins for the words that built the language. Sourced right.
461 words
Driving into a rival area looking for trouble — or, in production, the signature gliding 808 bass.
Atlanta's nickname for the Chattahoochee River.
Short for O'Block, the Parkway Gardens set in Chicago.
Insider nickname for Atlanta.
Dungeon Family rally call — owl-style holler for the crew.
Flaunting wealth — flamboyant + boast.
Acting wild, going overboard, or behaving unreasonably.
Cajun term of endearment, from French chéri(e).
Impressive, tough, or excellent — especially music or a look.
Your home or place — where you live and chill.
A handgun — usually a Tec-9-style semi-auto.
An instrumental made to sound like a specific artist — and a meme format for 'this gives off ___ energy.'
A 1962 Impala — peak lowrider chassis.
BD set on Chicago's South Side around 64th & Drexel — L'A Capone and RondoNumbaNine's block.
Stealing somebody's rhymes, moves, or style and trying to pass it off as your own.
Shorthand for Atlanta.
A hundred-dollar bill.
A stylish, confident woman who's sharp, sure of herself, and dressed to kill.
Lyrics, especially clever or hard-hitting ones — 'he's got bars.'
Texas/Gulf-Coast rap as the third hip-hop region, after East and West.
Your word is your unbreakable promise, a vow of total truth and honor.
A tense situation — beef, drama, or trouble brewing.
Chief Keef's alias, lifted from the Scarface drug lord Alejandro Sosa.
West Coast suffix that turns any word into slang.
When someone's saying something disrespectful, unreasonable, or out of pocket.
Stylish, attractive, and effortlessly cool — looking good and knowing it.
True + real, fused. The realest stamp of approval in Southern rap.
Someone relentlessly focused on making money — chasing the bag above all else.
A weak, fake rapper with no skills, the kind of MC real ones eat alive on the mic.
ATL's all-purpose 'you' — anybody, any size.
A knife — drill-rap slang from 'borer'.
Zone 4 — Westside / Southwest Atlanta.
A handgun — UK-drill phrasing that crossed the Atlantic.
NOLA's signature sandwich on crackly Leidenheimer French bread.
A firearm — old-faithful hip-hop term for a gun.
Money — chasing paper means chasing cash.
Luxurious, high-class, or fancy — living or acting upscale; from bourgeois.
Chicago street organization founded by Larry Hoover; the other half of the drill beef and the BDs' main rival.
Someone who resents your success instead of getting their own.
Pull up — peacefully or otherwise.