This Is What “Woo This” And “Woo Wap Da Bam” Mean In Chicago
In the 11th episode of The Slang Show, Saba explains a pair of Windy City sayings you might’ve heard from Chance the Rapper and Kanye West.
One of my favorite parts of Chance The Rapper's beautiful "Ultralight Beam" verse took me a while to decipher. I been this way since Arthur was anteater/ Now they wanna hit me with the woo wap da bam, he raps. Turns out "woo wap da bam" is a common saying in Chicago. When fellow Windy City native Saba visited The FADER a while back, he explained what the tongue-twister of a phrase, and its counterpart "woo this," means in his hometown. "It's the natural progression of a sentence or sentences describing dialogue between two or more parties," he said. "I consider it to be synonymous with 'so on and so forth'."
Watch the 11th installment of The Slang Show to find out what "woo this" and "woo wap da bam" mean in Chicago, and stay tuned to The FADER for more on your favorite artists' favorite colloquialisms.