Entry · catalog no. 0022
the Town
/ ðə ˈtaʊn /thuh TOWN
n. · Oakland, California · 1980s
✓ Verified
1.
Oakland, California. Used by Oaklanders about Oakland, and set deliberately against San Francisco across the bay — the City is over there, the Town is here. It carries a claim of belonging: to say the Town is to say you are from it, not visiting it.
“He reps the Town everywhere he goes, tattoos and all.”
Origin & Attribution
Bay Area Black vernacular, documented in Oakland rap from the late 1980s forward. Too $hort's "Oakland," on Life Is... Too Short in 1988, is the earliest attestation the archive can date; Digital Underground, MC Hammer and a long line of Oakland rappers carried it after him. The Golden State Warriors put it on alternate jerseys in the 2010s, which broadened the audience without changing whose name it is.
1988
Too $hort's "Oakland" on Life Is... Too Short
2006
MC Hammer's "I Got It From the Town"
2010s
Golden State Warriors adopt THE TOWN as alternate jersey branding
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The West
Oakland, California · 1980s
Spoken by
Black Oakland; carried nationally by Bay Area rap
$THETOWThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Rising38 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
75/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1988
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
@bayarea
Oakland, CA
@ladi
Los Angeles, CA
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
"Oakland" — Too $hort, Life Is... Too Short, Jive/RCA, 1988
audio · album track
■
+ Cite a source"I Got It From the Town" — MC Hammer, 2006
audio · single
See also