Entry · catalog no. 7015
buster
/ /ˈbʌstər/ /BUHS-ter
noun · West Coast (California) · 1990s
✓ Verified
1.
A person, usually a man, regarded as weak, phony, or beneath respect; a coward or a wannabe.
“Real ones showed up when it counted; the busters were nowhere to be found.”
Origin & Attribution
West Coast Black vernacular, hardened into a standard insult through 1980s and 90s hip-hop. Tupac Shakur's use — including on 1996's Hit Em Up — cemented it in the national vocabulary. TLC leaned on the same word three years later in No Scrubs, naming a scrub as also known as a buster.
late 1980s
Common West Coast hip-hop diss
1996
Tupac Shakur, Hit Em Up
1999
TLC, No Scrubs (also known as a buster)
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The West
West Coast (California) · 1990s
Spoken by
West Coast Black and hip-hop speakers
$BUSTERThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady39 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
62/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1987
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
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See also