P Diddy renaming himself Swag for a week proves the term is more popular than ever. But what does it mean?
Anyone after yet more evidence that P Diddy isn't quite like the rest of us would have been pleased to hear the hip-hop mogul's latest move last week. While in bed with the flu, rather than ordering Desperate Housewives box sets, P Diddy did what he does best ? he renamed himself. If Puff Daddy or Puffy was better than Sean Combs, and P Diddy was better than those (the P was dropped in the US in 2005 because it was "getting in between me and my fans"), then neither could compete with Swag. P Diddy's name for a week to celebrate recovery after "almost dying under the covers" even had its own Twitter account ? @iamswag.
While Swag has now returned to being P Diddy, Combs brought the word ? beloved of hip-hop ? to a wider audience. Gawker even ran a post titled An Old Person's Guide to Swag. But what does it mean? The OED defines it as "the booty carried off by burglers", but the Urban Dictionary sees it as an abbreviation of "swagger" or indeed "swagga" and dates its use back to 2002. The Urban Dictionary's 28-page thread of entries tend to define swag as "your overall confidence, style and demeanour". The consensus is, if you have swag (or indeed swagga), you're pretty cool.
Or perhaps not. If Soulja Boy Tell'em (Turn My Swag On), TI (My Swag) and Young Dro (Check Out My Swag) go by this interpretation, and Aziz Ansari's hilarious Swagger Coach sketch with Zach Galifianakis shows the elusive nature of the quality, others differ on its meaning. Like a word you're not sure how to spell when you look at it too long, swag is now so ubiquitous it's in danger of becoming meaningless. While variations according to hip-hop magazine XXL (which recently ran "a swagged out person's guide to 'swag'") include swagnificent, swagtastic and swagless, you can also be swagged out when you're looking sharp. P Diddy's new name has even questioned whether swag is a noun or an adjective (a swagjective, perhaps?). Take Cher Lloyd who, after singing Soulja Boy's track for her audition on The X Factor, dubbed her sound "swag pop". Odd Future's Tyler, the Creator and Kreayshawn say the word with alarming frequency, but it falls to rapper Lil B for the definitive use. His track Wonton Soup sees him say "swag" after most lines, using it like a full stop. A word becoming punctuation? Now that really is swag.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/jun/03/p-diddy-definition-swag
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