gangster (1896)
The original gangsters were not from the ‘hood, nor were they from Chicago.
Since appearing in the epic Old English poem ‘Beowulf’ (AD 711), the English word gang has had a long and varied history. Early English meanings of gang include ‘steps’, ‘manner of going, gait’, ‘currency’, ‘journey’ or ‘travelling’, ‘course of a stream’, ‘rung on a ladder’ and ‘turn, go or spell in a task or exercise’.
It later became the word for a ‘set or articles or items’, and it is from here that it gained a collective name for ‘workmen or crew’ by the 1600s. Over the next century gang morphed into a collective term for prisoners, pirates and slaves.
Early on in the US, gang also became the word for a ‘herd or pack of animals’. And so it is that a new American word cropped up in the Evening Dispatch of Columbus, Ohio, for the member of a gang of criminals, the gangster (1896). These were the truly American bad boys, later made famous by the Chicago gangster.
Then, 100 years after first being coined, a DJ and MC by the name Ice-T pioneered a style of music called gangster rap (1986), and the Oxford English Dictionary credits him for it. Up until this point rap had been all about partying and fun, perhaps reaching a low point in the film ‘Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo’ (1985).
The rapper Ice-T helped usher in the new, LA-centric criminal raps that have since become the lazy stereotype of the wider hip-hop (1982) genre. By 1988, Ice Cube and the rap supergroup N.W.A. turned gangster into gangsta (1988).
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