Entry · catalog no. 2914

100

/ /kiːp ɪt wʌn ˈhʌndrɪd/ /keep it WUN-HUN-drid

adjective · U.S., urban Black communities (with strong Southern and West Coast hip-hop throu · 2000s

✓ Verified

A state of full honesty and authenticity — telling the whole truth without editing, flattering, or performing for an audience. Used standalone ('I'm 100 with you right now') or inside the fuller phrase 'keep it 100,' it marks a statement or a person as unfiltered and trustworthy, the way '100 percent' marks a grade as perfect. To 'keep it 100' is a running commitment to that honesty, not a one-time act; to fail at it — to fake, front, or flatter — is to be called out as 'not keeping it 100' or, in the sharper in-group joke, 'keeping it negative 100.'

“Ye told me to kill y'all to keep it 100.”

Origin & Attribution

Grows directly out of African American Vernacular English's older phrase 'keep it real,' current since the 1990s, with '100' substituted as shorthand for '100 percent real.' Dictionary of record sources place its hip-hop documentation from the mid-2000s forward, well before it was folded into general internet slang or credited to emoji culture at large.

1990s

Predecessor phrase 'keep it real' is already established in Black vernacular and early hip-hop.

2005-2009

Rappers including Gucci Mane, WC, Steve Roc, and Jay-Z put 'keep it 100' into recorded verses, cementing the 100-percent variant.

2010

Unicode 6.0 ships the 💯 'Hundred Points' emoji, which is quickly adopted as shorthand for the phrase online.

Region of origin

West

Midwest

N.East

South

Nationwide / diaspora

U.S., urban Black communities (with strong Southern and West Coast hip-hop throu · 2000s

Spoken by

Black American speakers broadly, carried into wider youth and hip-hop-adjacent culture

$The Record · cultural traction

▲ Steady

21 yrs

ahead of the mainstream

55/100

peak cultural energy

Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.

Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest

First used

2005

in the culture

Recorded here

2026

point of first record

Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.

Hear it spoken

By region — how it actually sounds

@auntiereg

Atlanta, GA

@deltasoul

Memphis, TN

Contribute your pronunciation

Citations & Sources

■

Ye told me to kill y'all to keep it 100 (Jay-Z, D.O.A.)

song/verse

■

keep it 100 was used by black hip-hop artists in their songs since at least 2005

reference entry, Dictionary.com Slang

■

Larry Wilmore's Nightly Show ran a segment called 'Keep It 100' starting in 2015

TV segment

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