Entry · catalog no. 0716
buss down
/ /bʌs daʊn/ /BUS down
noun · South / national · 2010s
✓ Verified
1.
A watch or piece of jewelry taken apart and set with stones until no metal shows — flooded. Also spelled bust down; as a verb, to have a piece busted down.
“He took the plain Rollie to the jeweler and came back with a buss down.”
Origin & Attribution
Jeweler's-bench literalism made slang: the piece is busted down to its frame before the stones go in. The term spread through Southern hip hop in the 2010s as custom diamond work became the standard flex, and Blueface's 'Thotiana' remix era (2019) pushed 'bust down' into national vocabulary. The practice it names — icing out — goes back to the shine culture of 1990s rap.
2010s
Standard term in Southern rap for fully iced pieces
2019
Blueface's 'Bust Down Thotiana' era carries the word national
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
South / national · 2010s
Spoken by
Rappers and jewelry culture, South first
$BUSSDOThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady12 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
66/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
2014
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
@nolakid
New Orleans, LA
@htxdri
Houston, TX
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Blueface, 'Thotiana' (Bust Down Thotiana remix era) — 2019
song · verified
■
+ Cite a sourceDocumented usage across Cardi B, Lil Uzi Vert, Drake lyrics — 2018–2020
lyrics · documented
See also