OG

While OG has come to be a hip way of referring or showing respect to someone who’s an expert in any facet of life, its origins lie in gang culture. According to Steve Champion and former South Central Los Angeles gang member Anthony Ross in 2006, the term first started being used in the early 1970s by the LA-based Original Gangster Crips. The term original gangster was derived from the gang’s name and initially stood for “we’re the first.” Crips members would use the OG abbreviation as a shorthand when writing which part of the gang they belonged to (e.g., Original Eastside Crip or OG Eastside).

As the Crips expanded in the 1970s, and many new recruits were coming from different gangs, the definition of the term began to change. An OG became someone who was deeply devoted to their subset gang, and younger members of the gangs began to use it in reference to the elders. The term became so popular that even the Crips’s rival gang, the Bloods, started using it.

During the 1980s, OG began to enter the mainstream with its use in commercialized rap music. In songs and music videos, an OG was seen as someone in gang culture who was hip and impressive (an exceptional badass), and soon the term was used to describe people in the real world who exemplified those characteristics even when they had no gang affiliations. At the same time, the term continued to carry on its initial meaning in the sense that something was OG if it was the first of its kind or unique—that is, original.

One notable example of OG in the context of commercialized rap is in LA-raised rapper Ice-T’s single (and album) “O.G. Original Gangster,” which, at its peak, was #7 on 1991’s Billboard rap charts.