Entry · catalog no. 1326
say it loud
/ /seɪ ɪt laʊd/ /SAY it LOWD
phrase · Los Angeles studio, Augusta and Macon, Georgia roots; nationwide · 1960s
✓ Verified
1.
A call to state Black pride out loud rather than quietly, taken from the call-and-response of James Brown's 1968 record: he calls, a room of children answers I'm Black and I'm proud.
“Say it loud, he told them, and the whole room came back at him.”
2.
In later general use, a prompt to say a thing plainly and without hedging.
“You been mumbling around it all meeting. Say it loud.”
Origin & Attribution
From James Brown's "Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud," recorded in August 1968 in Los Angeles and released that same month on King Records, months after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The answering voices on the record are a group of local children, most of them not Black, brought into the studio to shout the response — a detail Brown told often. It went to number one on the R&B chart and became the plainest popular statement of the Black Power years. The word "Black" itself was still contested in 1968; the record helped settle it against "Negro."
1968
Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud recorded in August and released on King Records
1968
Reaches number one on the Billboard R&B chart
2020
Revived in street and social-media use during the summer's protests
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
Los Angeles studio, Augusta and Macon, Georgia roots; nationwide · 1960s
Spoken by
James Brown's audiences; Black organizers and radio through the late 1960s; general Black speech since
$SAYITLThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady58 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
62/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1968
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
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
James Brown, Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud, King Records 45-6187
single · 1968
■
+ Cite a sourceJames Brown with Bruce Tucker, James Brown: The Godfather of Soul, Macmillan
autobiography · 1986
See also