Entry · catalog no. 4343
Captain Save-a-Hoe
/ /ˈkæptən seɪv ə ˈhoʊ/ /KAP-tin sayv uh HOH
noun · Vallejo and the Bay Area, California · 1990s
✓ Verified
1.
A man who pours money, time and effort into rescuing, impressing or upgrading a woman — specifically one understood as promiscuous or as a sex worker — while she neither needs it nor returns it. The word hoe is meant literally and the contempt is aimed at the man: he is the mark, the sucker, the one being run.
“He paid her rent three months straight. That is Captain Save-a-Hoe behavior.”
2.
Used as an accusation of the behavior itself.
“You on that Captain Save-a-Hoe shit again.”
Origin & Attribution
Vallejo, California, 1993 — E-40 and his family crew The Click on their own Sick Wid It label, produced by Studio Ton. E-40 has said he was watching his own friends behave that way. The hook was D-Shot's idea, modeled on Frankie Smith's 1981 Double Dutch Bus. It is Bay Area slang in the strict sense: made in Vallejo, spread through the independent Bay rap economy, and only then sold nationally.
1993
Recorded for The Mail Man EP on Sick Wid It
1994
Released as a single 27 July; reaches no. 12 on Hot Rap Songs
2013
Carried to a new generation through the Grand Theft Auto V soundtrack
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The West
Vallejo and the Bay Area, California · 1990s
Spoken by
Bay Area rappers and listeners; national after 1994
$CAPTAIThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Enduring1 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
48/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1993
in the culture
Mainstream crossover
1994
search interest spikes
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
■
E-40 featuring The Click, Captain Save a Hoe, from The Mail Man (Sick Wid It)
1993
■
Billboard Hot Rap Songs chart, peak no. 12
1994
■
Complex, E-40 Breaks Down His 25 Most Essential Songs
2011
■
+ Cite a sourceFantastic Negrito featuring E-40, Searching for Captain Save a Hoe
2020
See also