Hip-hop is the ultimate loudspeaker for the inventive language being generated on back blocks, basement parties, and school cafeterias in various corners of Black America. Phrases and terms that, at one point, held significance to a handful of folks in small, local ecosystems, if uttered by the right standout artist, have the potential to enter the wider cultural lexicon. It’s widely understood that calling someone an opp, for instance, means you’re identifying an adversary, even if that opp is just an insufferable guy in the next cubicle. But, just 13 years ago, only teenagers from Chicago were using it to identify people with whom they were in active street warfare. The examples are countless, and, behind the expansion of vocabulary, there is always a foundation that is likely forgotten or plainly unknown by people who adopt it via popular culture. It’s, therefore, necessary to dig into the etymology of these traveling words.
For fans of Mid-Atlantic street music, a word that’s growing in notoriety is bip. As he caught more ears in underground rap circles, in 2023, Washington, D.C., rapper KP Skywalka distinguished himself from the rest of the drill-heavy DMV scene by pushing out an R&B-tinged sound and raunchy songs about pursuing courtship with as many girls as possible. KP, with his distinctive, trembling, nasally wine of a voice, also has a keen understanding of how to manipulate language in a way that makes his music a stimulating experience for prospective fans. Crucially, he used the word bip and, of course, its many inflections, bipped, bipper, bippin in the bulk of his music while rising through the underground ranks. On 2023’s “Bippin N’ Harmony,” he rapped, “She want me bip her. I’m bippin, I’m busy, baby.” Later that year, on “Bip Wit You,” from his Rhythm N Bip tape, he said, “She got the bip from the Walk, now they hate I be poppin’ with her.” And, when he traded bars with DMV rap veteran Lil Dude, they named the song “Bipperz Anthem.” As he ascended, people were genuinely curious about what the hell bip meant, given its ambiguous use in his music.
