Entry · catalog no. 7418

bird

/ /bɜrd/ /BURD

noun · Black America, nationwide · 1980s

✓ Verified

A kilogram of cocaine. Crack-era coding: kilos flew — they came in on planes and moved fast — and "bird" let you talk weight without saying it. Flipping birds is moving kilos; a birdman is the one who has them.

“They wasn't talking ounces — whole birds.”

Origin & Attribution

Street vernacular of the 1980s crack era. Rap put it on record early: Ice Cube's "A Bird in the Hand" (Death Certificate, 1991) built a whole track on the word and what forces a man toward it, and it has run through hustler rap ever since — Clipse, Jeezy, Migos, and every trap catalog since.

1980s

Crack-era street coding for the kilo

1991

Ice Cube's "A Bird in the Hand" on record

2000s

Standard vocabulary across trap and coke rap

Region of origin

West

Midwest

N.East

South

Nationwide

Black America, nationwide · 1980s

Spoken by

Street and trap vernacular; hip-hop

$BIRDThe Record · cultural traction

▲ Steady

35 yrs

ahead of the mainstream

75/100

peak cultural energy

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

Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest

First used

1991

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

@auntiereg

Atlanta, GA

@deltasoul

Memphis, TN

Contribute your pronunciation

Citations & Sources

■

Ice Cube, "A Bird in the Hand" (Death Certificate)

1991

■

Clipse-era coke rap, passim

2002

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