Rap slang is the street vocabulary that UK and US rap carried from local corners into group chats everywhere. Blud means mate, opps are enemies, no cap means no lie, bet means OK and wsg is short for “what’s good”. Most of it reaches TikTok years after it was first said in a stairwell in Hackney or on a block in Chicago, and the meanings drift a little every time it travels.
The words below are split by where they come from. London’s are rooted in Multicultural London English and grime. America’s come mostly from African American English and the trap and drill scenes of Atlanta and Chicago. A few, like opps, belong to both now.
Where UK rap slang comes from
Linguists call the way many young Londoners speak Multicultural London English, or MLE. Researchers at the University of York trace it to the early 1980s in boroughs like Hackney and Lewisham, where Cockney met the Jamaican Creole brought by Windrush-era families and later picked up words from Yoruba, Bengali, Turkish, Arabic and dozens of other languages. The tabloids called it “Jafaican”. Linguists say that is wrong: few MLE features can be proved to be Jamaican, and most of the grammar is home-grown. The slang is where the Caribbean influence shows most.
Grime gave that vocabulary a microphone in the 2000s, and UK drill gave it a darker edge in the 2010s. Its biggest crossover moment came from a comedian. Michael Dapaah’s character Roadman Shaq performed a freestyle on Charlie Sloth’s Fire in the Booth on BBC Radio 1Xtra in August 2017, and the clip became Man’s Not Hot, a number three hit that put “the ting goes skrrrahh” in the mouths of primary school pupils and, briefly, Jeremy Corbyn.
UK slang words and what they mean
Blud means mate or bro, and is used to address a friend: “you good, blud?” It comes from “blood”, in the sense of family, and sits close to “bredren”, the Jamaican pronunciation of “brethren”. Urban Dictionary recorded it by 2003, and it was everyday London speech through the 2000s. TikTok gave it a second life in the 2020s as a meme word, usually aimed at someone acting out of place: “blud thinks he’s on a film set”. It is not a swear word, though it can sound rude in the wrong tone.
Bruv, brudda and fam do the same job as blud. Bruv and brudda come from “brother”. Fam, short for family, is used for close friends as much as relatives.
Mandem means a group of men, your friends or crew. It comes from Caribbean English, “man” plus “dem” (them). The female version is gyaldem. Jessie J used mandem in her 2010 single Do It Like a Dude, an early sign of the word moving from the estate into the charts.
Man can also replace “I” or “me”, as in “man’s not hot” (I’m not hot) or “man’s tired”. It is one of the clearest grammatical features linguists point to in MLE.
Wagwan is a greeting meaning “what’s going on”. It comes from the Jamaican “wha a gwan” and is often texted as wag1.
Ends means your neighbourhood or area: “he’s not from my ends”. In drill it can carry a territorial sense, the patch a group claims.
Peng means attractive or excellent, used for a person, food or trainers. A peng ting is an attractive person.
Ting means a thing, an event or, often, a girl or partner. “The ting goes skrrrahh” is Big Shaq describing the sound of a gun, which is part of why the line was funny.
Bare means a lot or very: “bare people were there”, “that’s bare long”.
Long means tedious or too much effort: “queuing for that is long”.
Peak means bad luck or a bad situation: “you missed the bus? That’s peak.” One theory links it to the crush of peak-time travel on the Tube.
Gassed means excited or overhyped, sometimes in a way others find too much: “he’s gassed about his new whip”.
Whip means a car. UK and US rap share it.
Creps are trainers.
Wasteman is someone useless or unreliable, a waste of time.
Allow it means leave it or stop: “allow it, man, it’s not that deep”.
Innit started as “isn’t it” and now tags the end of almost any sentence, regardless of grammar: “we’re going later, innit”. You get me (texted ygm) does a similar job.
Calm means fine or no problem. Dun know means of course or definitely.
Link means to meet up: “let’s link later”. It can also mean seeing someone casually.
Chirps or chirpse, means to flirt or chat someone up.
Vexed means annoyed or angry, another Caribbean import.
Moving mad means behaving wildly or out of line.
Yute means a young person, from the Jamaican pronunciation of “youth”.
Feds means the police in UK slang, borrowed from US rap, where it originally meant federal agents. Old Bill is the older London equivalent.
Roadman describes a young man immersed in street culture, the tracksuit-and-man-bag type the internet loves to parody. Dapaah’s Roadman Shaq is the best-known send-up.
UK drill took this vocabulary and added terms from its own world, much of it about rivalries, police and violence. The language researcher Tony Thorne has compiled a drill glossary of around 250 terms, partly because police and prosecutors have used drill lyrics as evidence in court, a practice critics say criminalises young Black artists for what they write.
Opps: the word both scenes share
Opps are enemies, rivals or anyone working against you. The word is short for “opposition” or “opponents”. “Opposition” had been used in rap since at least LL Cool J in 1985, but the clipped form “opp” belongs to Chicago drill: Chief Keef used it in his 2011 track John Madden, and the word spread with drill as the sound travelled from Chicago to Brooklyn and London. UK drill adopted it wholesale, and by 2018 the US rappers Playboi Carti, Lil Durk and Cardi B were using it on Twitter.
TikTok has since softened it. Online, an opp can be a rival, a hater in the comments or a friend who ate your chips, and the word often appears in jokes about animals being “the opps”. Naughty by Nature’s 1991 hit O.P.P. used the same letters for something else entirely, which is why “down with O.P.P.” still turns up in searches for the modern word.
US rap slang and what it means
No cap means no lie, for real. Cap means a lie, and calling something cap means you don’t believe it. The roots go back to “capping”, the ritual exchange of exaggerated insults among Black Americans in the 1940s, which is how “cap” came to mean stretching the truth. Future and Young Thug’s 2017 track No Cap pushed the phrase into the mainstream.
Bet means OK, deal or agreed: “see you at eight?” “Bet.” Merriam-Webster traces this sense to African American English in the 1980s, probably shortened from “you bet”. It can also accept a challenge or, said flatly as “OK, bet”, signal sarcastic disbelief.
WSG is short for “what’s good?”, a greeting that works like “what’s up?”. It mostly lives in texts and DMs, and a reply of “wsg” can also be an invitation to talk.
SZN is short for “season” and means a period when something is happening or someone is at their best: “cuffing szn” (when people pair up for winter), “playoff szn”, “exam szn”. It spread through sports and hip-hop social media in the 2010s.
Let him cook means let someone carry on, because they might be on to something good. In hip-hop, “cooking” has long meant making something in the studio. The catchphrase comes from the Bay Area rapper Lil B, whose 2010 YouTube video Based Cooking (Let That Boy Cook) introduced his cooking dance. It became a meme in the 2020s, often used ironically, most famously as “Let Russ cook” during the Denver Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson’s difficult 2022 season.
2 man is a plan where two friends go out with two other people, usually with romantic intentions. It works like a double date with less commitment. Urban Dictionary first recorded it in 2017, with roots in Detroit slang, and it went viral on TikTok in 2022, where “running a 2 man” became a skit format. It has nothing to do with the London use of “man” as a pronoun, which confuses plenty of British readers.
Trap means a place where drugs are sold, and gave its name to trap music, the Atlanta sound named after T.I.’s 2003 album Trap Muzik.
Bando is short for “abandoned house”, a derelict property used as a trap house. Migos named their 2012 breakthrough after it.
Plug means a supplier, originally of drugs and now of anything hard to get: “he’s the plug for concert tickets”.
Drip means stylish clothes or a striking look: “the drip is crazy”. Cardi B and Migos titled a 2018 track after it.
Lit means exciting or brilliant, and is Travis Scott’s signature ad-lib.
Deadass comes from New York and means seriously or for real: “deadass, I’m not going”.
GNG is short for “gang”, meaning your crew or the people you ride with. Rap has used “gang” as a word for loyalty for decades, and the three-letter spelling grew out of group chats before TikTok creators started using it to talk to their followers: “thanks, gng”. On Snapchat it sometimes stands for “goodnight, gang” instead.
Womp womp is a sad trombone written out, a mocking “too bad” aimed at someone whose plan has just fallen apart. It was a game-show and sitcom sound effect long before rap picked it up. The Chicago rapper Valee, then signed to Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. Music, turned it into a song title with “Womp Womp”, his May 2018 single featuring Jeremih.
Most of these words were made by small communities to talk among themselves, and by the time a brand uses one in an advert, the people who coined it have usually moved on to something new.
