Entry · catalog no. 4248
ridah
/ /ˈraɪdə/ /RY-duh
noun · California — Bay Area and Los Angeles · 1990s
✓ Verified
1.
A person who is loyal under pressure and will go with you into whatever comes — originally into retaliation, later into anything hard.
“Say what you want about her, that's a ridah.”
Origin & Attribution
California, mid-1990s, out of the verb ride — to roll out, to go handle something. The earliest datable commercial uses of the ridah and ridaz spelling are Los Angeles gang records: the Damu Ridas and Nationwide Rip Ridaz albums, both released on Dangerous Records in September 1995. Tupac recorded Ambitionz az a Ridah in Los Angeles in October 1995, and it opened All Eyez on Me the following February. The Bay Area carries the word too — Spice 1, and Rydah J. Klyde out of Pittsburg — so the honest label is West Coast rather than any one city. A lexicographic gap is worth recording: Green's Dictionary of Slang has no American Black sense for this word at all, listing instead a UK Black sense for a dependable person cited to 2011, which records the descendant and omits the source. The softened ride or die sense is regularly handed to Gen Z and to romance; it is mid-1990s Black California, and it started in a harder place than that.
1995
Damu Ridas and Nationwide Rip Ridaz released on Dangerous Records, Los Angeles
1996
2Pac opens All Eyez on Me with Ambitionz az a Ridah
2004
Spice 1 releases The Ridah
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The West
California — Bay Area and Los Angeles · 1990s
Spoken by
Black California — Bay Area and Los Angeles; later rap generally
$RIDAHThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady1 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
60/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1995
in the culture
Mainstream crossover
1996
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
■
Damu Ridas, Damu Ridas (Dangerous Records)
1995
■
2Pac, Ambitionz az a Ridah, All Eyez on Me (Death Row/Interscope)
1996
■
+ Cite a sourceGreen's Dictionary of Slang, rider n. (records only the UK Black sense)
2011
See also