No taxation without "Represent!"ation

[pne]

Occasionally, people say "Represent!", often after a certain city or place is mentioned.

Where did this come from? What does it mean?

From context, I'm guessing something like "I'm proud to come from <place X> and I think that all <place X>ers should be, too, and should show this pride unitedly in public" or the like. Or possibly "<place X> is gr8!!!1111".

Comments

[squigglz.livejournal.com]

It's more of a 'place x wuz here' type thing, i think. Like currently, i 'represent' Pennsylvania on this entry.

I think.

[pne.livejournal.com]

So you could say, "Pennsylvania, represent!" ?

[sparkofcreation.livejournal.com]

She could if there were other Pennsylvanians reading the thread. Then everyone from Pennsylvania would cheer/clap/whistle/whatever.

She's "representing" for Pennsylvania, but I always got the impression that saying "Represent!" was something like "All you people from place X, make yourselves known!"

[mendel.livejournal.com]

I think you've got it with the pride thing. IIRC the original thing being represented was gang affiliation and then it got generalized from there (especially through gang/neighbourhood connections).

[fweebles.livejournal.com]

I think you've hit the proverbial nail on the head.

As an aside, I always find it amusing to see people discussing gang-/ghetto-/urban-culture at an intellectual level, complete with correct grammar and large words.

"Conrad, could you expound on the etymological origins of 'word up, yo'?"

[pne.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the defition of "fo' shizzle my nizzle" (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fo%27+shizzle+my+nizzle&r=f) as "I concur with you whole heartedly my African american brother".

But,

I always find it amusing to see people discussing gang-/ghetto-/urban-culture at an intellectual level, complete with correct grammar and large words.

Yes, there is that :) A bit of cognitive dissonance, I think, due to the mixing of stylistic levels.

[entirelysonja.livejournal.com]

I'll be interested to see the answers, as I don't have any idea what it means, either.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Means just what you think it means. (http://www.rapdict.org/Represent). Which is not as helpful as it sounds.

[pne.livejournal.com]

The Urban Dictionary entries (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=represent) are slightly more useful, though as often, you have different people writing conflicting entries which may or may not capture the sense that specific people use a word in.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I particularly like 3 and 9. Words can have more than one meaning so I don't think it makes much sense to talk of dictionary entries "conflicting".