Entry · catalog no. 0031
raw
/ ˈrɔ /RAW
adj. · national · 1960s
✓ Verified
1.
Excellent, powerful, impressive. The praise runs through the literal sense rather than away from it: the thing is good because nothing has been added to make it easier to take. Applied to a verse, a car, a fighter, a fit, a person's nerve.
“That second verse was raw, he didn't even take a breath.”
Origin & Attribution
Black American vernacular, documented well before hip-hop. Green's Dictionary of Slang carries the sense as African American in origin with a 1965 citation from Hari Rhodes's novel A Chosen Few, about Black Marines at Montford Point. The word entered hip-hop's vocabulary in the mid-1980s — Ice-T on "6 'N the Mornin'" in 1986, Big Daddy Kane titling a record with it in 1988 — and has not left.
1965
Hari Rhodes's A Chosen Few carries the earliest cited use of the praise sense
1986
Ice-T's "6 'N the Mornin'" puts it in hip-hop's vocabulary
1988
Big Daddy Kane's "Raw" on Long Live the Kane makes the word itself the boast
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
national · 1960s
Spoken by
Black Americans nationally; documented in Black fiction before hip-hop carried it
$RAWThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady61 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
1965
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
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
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Citations & Sources
■
A Chosen Few — Hari Rhodes, Bantam Books, 1965
text · novel
■
"6 'N the Mornin'" — Ice-T, Techno Hop Records, 1986; later on Rhyme Pays, Sire, 1987
audio · single
■
+ Cite a source"Raw" — Big Daddy Kane, Long Live the Kane, Cold Chillin' Records, 1988
audio · single
See also