Entry · catalog no. 3417
the opps
/ — /pending
noun · Chicago (South Side), later New York and UK drill scenes · 2010s
✓ Verified
1.
One's enemies or rival faction — the people an individual or crew is in active conflict with, whether that conflict is gang-related, personal, or just competitive. Usually spoken in the plural, 'opps,' to refer to an enemy camp collectively; a single adversary is 'an opp.' In its home context the word carries real weight, naming people tied to actual violence or territorial beef; away from that context, among younger or wider audiences, it has loosened to cover any rival, hater, or person working against you, sometimes said half-jokingly.
“He won't ride through that block no more — too many opps over there.”
Origin & Attribution
Opps is a clipped form of 'opposition,' rooted in Black Chicago street and gang vocabulary and carried into the drill rap scene of the South Side in the early 2010s. <cite index="11-11">The earliest known use of the abbreviation "opp" stems from a song by Chicago-based drill artist Chief Keef, in his 2011 track "John Madden," in which he says, "Better stop, fuck nigga we don't fuck with opps (Nah)."</cite> <cite index="11-13">Other early uses of the word "opp" stem from Lil Reese, Chief Keef's contemporary at the time, in his track "Us," in which he says, "Fuck a opp, we send shots."</cite> <c
2011
Chief Keef records "John Madden," the earliest documented use of "opp" as shorthand for opposition
2012
Lil Reese's "Us" and the rise of Chicago drill spread the term through the genre's core scene
2016-2018
Drill's national spread and viral tweets from artists like Playboi Carti, Cardi B, and Young Thug push "opp" into mainstream slang
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Midwest
Chicago (South Side), later New York and UK drill scenes · 2010s
Spoken by
Black street and gang-affiliated youth, drill rappers and their listeners, broadened to Black youth culture generally an
$THEOPPThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady15 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
85/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
2011
in the culture
Recorded here
2026
point of first record
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
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Chicago, IL
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Detroit, MI
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Citations & Sources
■
Chief Keef, "John Madden" (2011)
song
■
Lil Reese, "Us" (2012)
song
■
The New Yorker, 5 May 2022
magazine article
■
+ Cite a sourceMerriam-Webster Slang dictionary entry, "opps"
online dictionary
Also spelled
See also