Entry · catalog no. 3615
he's him
/ /hiz ˈhɪm/ /heez HIM
phrase · No single city — Black sports talk and rap, nationwide · 2010s
✓ Verified
1.
Said of somebody whose dominance in their field has passed the point of argument. The bare pronoun does the work a superlative would.
“Forty-one points in an elimination game on the road. He's him.”
2.
Turned back on somebody in the negative — bro thinks he's him — to mock a person performing an eliteness they have not earned.
“He hit one open three and started backpedaling. Bro thinks he's him.”
Origin & Attribution
Black sports talk and hip-hop, roughly 2019 into 2021, with the first-person I'm him coming first. Kevin Gates titled an album I'm Him in September 2019, and Odell Beckham Jr. is reported using it in Sunday Night Football intros the same year. The third-person form is verifiable from November 2021. It is the newest layer of a long stack in Black English that gets a superlative out of the plainest possible words — he's the man, he that dude, he nice — and it is not tied to one city. Correct two origin stories that circulate on slang sites without any sourcing: a 2016 League of Legends origin and a 2010 Lil B origin. Neither has primary confirmation of any kind.
2019
Kevin Gates releases I'm Him on 27 September
2021
The third-person form is documented in NBA fan coverage on 11 November
2023
Joe Burrow is caught saying it on a mic'd-up playoff broadcast in January and the phrase goes fully mainstream
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
No single city — Black sports talk and rap, nationwide · 2010s
Spoken by
Black athletes, Black sports Twitter, rappers, and the group chats around them
$HESHIMThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Rising4 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
88/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
2019
in the culture
Mainstream crossover
2023
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
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Kevin Gates, I'm Him, Atlantic / Bread Winners' Association, 27 September 2019
album
■
@ThunderFilmRoom, Twitter, 11 November 2021
social media
■
Tim Whelan Jr., "Explaining the 'I'm Him' phenomenon in sports," MetroWest Daily News, 22 April 2023
newspaper
■
+ Cite a source"Joe Burrow Questions Whether He Said 'I'm Him' vs. Bills," Sports Illustrated, 26 January 2023
magazine
See also