Now let’s admit folks,who actually knows what they are saying when they randomly spurt out the words “Yaowa” after getting a fresh dose of Joell Ortiz?
A term coined and made popular by the rapper, he is currently working on a mixtape by the same title, dropping this month, but WTF does it even mean?
In speaking on the YAOWA mixtape, the Brooklyn native spoke to MTV and gave some incite to his phrase with the background and the overall changing meaning.
“I got so many meanings of yaowa, it’s crazy. First, it’s used as a term of endearment for dudes around my way. How you say, ‘What up?’ We say, ‘Yaowa!’
Ortiz then went into the back story and how slurred words spoken while drunk can evolve into new slang.
“It came from my man Smash. Shout to Smash. He used to be really drunk around the way. It’s a distance between the buildings. He used to be saying, ‘Yo, what up?’ But he’d be so drunk, it sounded like he was saying, ‘Yawhuhup?’ He’d be twisted. I just turned it into yaowa.”
In the studio, the rapper has coined it to show the higher level that he reaches whenever he begins to rap.
“Every time I get on a beat, I say, ‘Yaowa,’ before I rap on it. Then I started playing around with it and turned it into [meaning]: ‘you’re actually one world away.’ I be feeling like my flow is not of Earth. I zone out, become an alien with it. On another freestyle, I said, ‘I’ll put you in a hospital because my flow is so sick.’ That’s ‘your A$$ on wild anesthetics.’ I just be spazzin’ out with the yaowa.”
As stated earlier, the Latin wordsmith is currently working on his next mixtape, which will be hosted by Don Cannon and DJ Green Lantern, all being a precursor to his sophomore LP Free Agent.
