Entry · catalog no. 2416
bammer
/ /ˈbæmɚ/ /BAM-er
noun · San Francisco Bay Area, originating in Hunters Point, San Francisco · 1990s
✓ Verified
1.
Marijuana of the poorest quality — dry, brown, weak, mostly stem and leaf — the kind sold to people who do not know better or cannot get anything else.
“He paid full price and got handed a bag of bammer.”
2.
By extension, anything fake, cheap or worthless; also used as a modifier before a noun.
“Those are bammer shoes and everybody can tell.”
Origin & Attribution
The Bay Area attribution holds, with a correction. The word in this form belongs to Black San Francisco, specifically the Hunters Point projects, where Christian Black C Matthews recorded a local version titled Don't Give Me No Bammer Joint — chosen to rhyme with Hunters Point — before rewriting it with Kyle Mr. Cee Church as Don't Give Me No Bammer Weed for RBL Posse, released on In-A-Minute Records in 1992. That record is what carried the word out of the neighborhood; it reached number 16 on Billboard's rap singles chart and was heavily played on Bay Area radio. But bammer was already circulating in Hunters Point before the song, and its root is older and not Californian: slang references derive it from bammy, mid-century Black drug slang for weak marijuana cited from 1953, itself from bam. A likely further root is Alabama, the old shorthand for country, cheap and inferior. That last point matters for this archive: the D.C. word bama, already entered here, is aimed at a person — someone unstylish and out of step — while Bay Area bammer is aimed at a substance or an object. The link between them is probable but unproven. They share a root and they are not the same word, and they should not be merged.
1953
Bammies for the poorest-grade marijuana cigarettes cited in print
c. 1990
Black C records Don't Give Me No Bammer Joint in Hunters Point
1992
RBL Posse release Don't Give Me No Bammer Weed on In-A-Minute Records; the single reaches No. 16 on the rap chart
1995
Listed as low-grade marijuana in the slang dictionary A2Z
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The West
San Francisco Bay Area, originating in Hunters Point, San Francisco · 1990s
Spoken by
Black San Franciscans, especially Hunters Point; Bay Area rap audiences, then West Coast smokers generally
$BAMMERThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Fading34 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
58/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1992
in the culture
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
@bayarea
Oakland, CA
@ladi
Los Angeles, CA
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
RBL Posse, Don't Give Me No Bammer Weed, In-A-Minute Records, 1992; full-length version on A Lesson to Be Learned, 1992
record
■
Jonathon Green, entries bammer n., bammer adj. and bammy n., Green's Dictionary of Slang, digital edition
glossary
■
Lois Stavsky et al., A2Z (1995)
glossary
■
+ Cite a sourceJesse Taylor, A History of RBL Posse with Black C: On Bammer, Mistaken Murders and Lessons Learned, Passion of the Weiss, 27 February 2018
oral history
See also