OG

Abbreviation of Original Gangster. Per rapper Ice-T (Tracy Marrow), who popularized the term on his 1991 album O.G. Original Gangster, it came from Los Angeles gang slang — attributed by researchers Steve Champion and Anthony Ross (2006) to the Original Gangster Crips set in early-1970s South Central Los Angeles, where "OG" denoted first-generation members. Ice-T has also noted the broader LA vernacular meaning of "the Original" (as in "original Chuck Taylors"). When the phenotype that became OG Kush was named in Los Angeles around 1996, the grower Josh D stated that "we called it OG because it was authentic…the original." Widely circulated folk etymologies — "Ocean Grown" and ⚠️ "original grower" — are later back-formations; the primary documented meaning traces through Ice-T and the Crips.