Question 1

What does “represent” mean?

Accepted Answer

To stand publicly for the place and people that made you, and to conduct yourself so that they are not embarrassed by the standing.

Question 2

Where does “represent” come from?

Accepted Answer

Represent is a product of Black and Latino hip-hop in New York in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when rap's center of gravity shifted from the general ghetto to the specific hood and artists began attaching themselves to named blocks, projects, and boroughs. Murray Forman, whose study of the subject in Popular Music (2000) is still the standard account, describes representing as the paired work of turning the hood out and showing respect for the nurture it provides — building a broader profile for the home territory while acknowledging what it gave you — and notes that by the mid-1990s this had become a required practice among hardcore rap acts rather than an option. The written record follows the practice closely. Fat Joe, then billed as Fat Joe da Gangsta, titled his Bronx debut Represent, released 27 July 1993 on Relativity and Violator. Nas put a track called Represent on Illmatic on 19 April 1994, and described the assignment in exactly the terms the word implies — a serious weight, representing Queensbridge, an honor because of what Marley Marl and MC Shan had already done for the same six blocks. Note the shape of that sentence: representing is inherited, and the person doing it is answerable to the people who did it before. The verb has since dissolved into general American English, where it means little more than showing up in team colors, and it is often assumed to have always been generic. It was not. It came out of a specific argument about place, loyalty, and who is entitled to speak for whom, and the accountability is the point.