Entry · catalog no. 0708
krump
/ /krʌmp/ /KRUMP
noun · South Los Angeles · 2000s
✓ Verified
1.
A street dance of chest pops, arm swings, and stomps thrown at full force — aggression turned into form. To krump is to release everything into movement; battles look like fights and function as the opposite of one.
“He wasn't mad no more after the session — he krumped it all out.”
Origin & Attribution
Created by young Black dancers in South Los Angeles in the early 2000s, developed out of the clowning scene Tommy the Clown started in 1992 by dancers including Tight Eyez and Big Mijo, in the long shadow of the 1992 uprising. The backronym 'Kingdom Radically Uplifting Mighty Praise' came from inside the community. David LaChapelle's documentary Rize (2005) carried it worldwide.
1992
Tommy the Clown begins clowning in South LA
early 2000s
Krump splits from clowning as its own harder style
2005
Rize documents the scene and carries krump worldwide
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The West
South Los Angeles · 2000s
Spoken by
South LA dancers, then street-dance communities worldwide
$KRUMPThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady25 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
70/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
2001
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
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Rize, dir. David LaChapelle — 2005
documentary · verified
■
+ Cite a sourceNPR coverage of Rize and the krump scene — 2005
journalism · verified
See also