A Partial Timeline For Positive Meanings For The Word "Fly" In African American Culture

FunkyVinylJunkie, Dec. 17, 2007
**** Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post provides a partial timeline for positive meanings of the word "fly" in African American culture. The content of this post is presented for linguistic, cultural, and entertainment purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners. Thanks to the Boogie Boys for their musical legacies and thanks to all others who are mentioned in this post. Thanks also to all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to the publisher of this video on YouTube, -snip- Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-history-of-word-fly-meaning.html for a closely related pancocojams post about the history and current use of the word "fly" in the United States. Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2013/01/what-fly-fly-girl-fly-guy-mean-in.html for a 2013 pancocojams post entitled "What "Fly", "Fly Girl" & "Fly Guy" Mean In African American Slang". Much of the content of that post is reformatted in this 2020 post.

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A PARTIAL TIME LINE FOR THE USE OF "FLY" WITH THE MEANING HIP, COOL AND/OR ATTRACTIVE 1972 - Super Fly movie and the title of a Curtis Mayfield Soul music album based on music from that movie ** 1973 -Super Fly T. N.T movie Here's some information about those 1970s movies and a 1990 Super Fly sequel and a 2018 remake of that Super Fly movie. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Fly_(1972_film) "Super Fly is a 1972 American blaxploitation crime drama film directed by Gordon Parks Jr. and starring Ron O'Neal as Youngblood Priest, an African American pimp and cocaine dealer who is trying to quit the underworld drug business. The film is well known for its soundtrack, written and produced by soul musician Curtis Mayfield. It was released on August 4, 1972.

O'Neal reprised his role as Youngblood Priest in the 1973 film Super Fly T.N.T., which he also directed. Producer Sig Shore directed a second sequel, The Return of Superfly, released in 1990, with Nathan Purdee as Priest. A remake was released in 2018."...

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January 5, 1980 - Sugarhill Gang's Hip Hop record "Rappers Delight" was released.

Here's the line in that track that includes the word "fly":
"Check it out, I'm the C-A-S-A, the N-O-V-A,

And the rest is F-L-Y,"...

** Feb 18, 1985 - Boogie Boys - "A Fly Girl" From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Life_(Boogie_Boys_album)

"City Life is the first album by American rap group Boogie Boys, released in 1985 on Capitol Records. The album peaked at No. 53 on the Billboard 200.[3] The album had a major hit in America with the single "A Fly Girl."

As one of the first rap groups to sign with a major label, the Boogie Boys were under pressure to create a fresh, new sound. Capitol wanted to release "City Life" as their first single as they felt it would have broader appeal, especially since the song combined rapping and singing. But the Boogie Boys felt "A Fly Girl" would have more impact.

Boogie Boys member Joe "Romeo J.D." Malloy:

"Put 'Fly Girl' first, then we can come with the other stuff." So we compromised: we put out "City Life" as the A-side and "Fly Girl" as the B-side; so when it came out, DJs were like, "yeah, 'City Life' is hot," but then when they flipped it over and heard those drums it was like, "oh s--t… what's this?" So that's how it jumped off; and the streets is gonna make happen what they want to happen. So "Fly Girl" is the record that popped off and they still didn't do a video for it. People were running in the stores trying to find "Fly Girl" for weeks and weeks, and they didn't have any copies in the stores.^[4]

**
-1985-Plebblee Poo (female singer) -  A Fly Guy (Part 1and Part II)
-snip-
"A Fly Guy" records were responses (answer) to the Boogie Boy's hit record "Fly Girl" 

**
mid 1980s - 1990s 
A number of foot stomping cheers* were composed and performed by (mostly) African American pre-teen/teenager girls, based on the Boogie Boys' hit track "A Fly Girl".

A "fly girl" means an attractive, sexy female who is up to date with the latest urban culture fashions, lingo, dances etc.)
-snip-

"Foot stomping cheers" is my term for cheers that were had a distinctive textual structure and were chanted while two or more girls did synchronized foot stomping routines.

Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2016/09/foot-stomping-cheers-alphabetical-list_40.html for six examples that I've collected or come across online of the "Fly Girl" foot stomping cheer. Please add to the folkloric record by sharing examples and demographic information about this cheer in the comment section below. Thanks!

**
1990s- Fly Girls (name for the dance troupe on the ground breaking comedy sketch television show In Living Color. Actress Jennifer Lopez got her start as a member of the Fly Girls' dance troupe. https://nypost.com/2018/08/20/remember-when-j-lo-was-a-fly-girl/

**
1991- Queen Latifah - "Fly Girl" [Hip Hop track from her album Nature of a Sista' ]

**
1993- Tupac's Hip Hop record "I Get Around" includes the word "fly".
-snip-
In that record, Tupac brags about how he easily scores with the ladies & then leaves them:

"baby got a problem saying bye bye
Just another hazard of a fly guy"
http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/I-Get-Around-lyrics-2Pac/BF82D7758D3AF2DA4825686A000CF3B0
-snip-
My interpretation of those lyrics is that Tupac is saying that females who have a problem with him [or any fly guy] saying goodbye should realize that that's what they should expect when they become involved with a man who's deep into the urban lifestyle. To be clear, according to the use in African American culture of the term "fly girl", while that term meant that a female was "street wise" (able to handle herself in Black urban street life), the emphasis seems to have been placed on how females looked (their face, their body, their clothing). 

In contrast, while a "fly guy" was likely a male who was good looking (had an attractive face and sexually attractive body), the emphasis seemed to have been placed on how many females the man could sexually score with, and the view was that it was expected that the man wasn't going to be faithful with any one female, nor was he going to involve himself in a long lasting relationship with any female or females. 

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1993/1996 - Omar Tyree's book "Flyy Girl" and sequels 
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flyy_Girl
"Flyy Girl" is young adult/new adult literature and an urban fiction book written by Omar Tyree. The book was originally published by Mars Productions in 1993 and republished by Simon & Schuster for adults in 1996.[1] The novel is regarded to be the genesis of the modern urban-fiction/street-lit movement that would later gain momentum in 1999 with the publication of Sister Souljah's The Coldest Winter Ever.

Summary

Flyy Girl is African-American coming-of-age story that follows Tracy Ellison from her sixth-birthday party in 1977 to her 17th birthday. Tracy grows up in the middle-class Philadelphia suburb of Germantown. The daughter of a dietitian and pharmacist, Tracy is beautiful, intelligent, and armed with self-esteem and a sassy mouth. Tracy is also boy crazy, which leads to sex in the indulgent, hip-hop 1980s and the effects of the cocaine economy flourishing in black communities.

 Sequels

Tyree wrote two sequels to Flyy Girl: For the Love of Money (2001) and Boss Lady (2006). Both were published by Simon & Schuster"

**
2005 - Three 6 Mafia's Hip Hop track "Stay Fly" 
-snip-

The hook to that Hip Hop track is "I gotta stay fly, until I die".
Here's an excerpt of notes about this track from its genuis.com lyric page https://genius.com/Three-6-mafia-stay-fly-lyrics
"Widely considered a southern hip-hop classic, “Stay Fly” is a triumphant and unforgiving trunk-rattler anthem straight out of Memphis, Tennessee. Released as the first single from dirty south pioneers Three 6 Mafia’s 2006 hit album Most Known Unknown, the song features fellow Memphis natives 8Ball & MJG and Young Buck. “Stay Fly” became Three 6 Mafia’s biggest song ever, peaking at #13 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and becoming certified 2x platinum by the RIAA on December 11, 2006."...

-snip-
Please add to this partial timeline for positive meanings of the word "fly" in African American culture by sharing information about this topic in the comment section below. Thanks! 

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The Occupy Movement Isn’t Supposed To Be A Kumbayah Cake Walk

Written by Azizi Powell

revised-March 1, 2015 and July 25, 2026

On May 1, 1992, after the acquittal of Los Angeles police in his beating trial sparked widespread rebelling, Rodney King put aside his prepared statement and spoke these words from his heart:
"People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?"

But getting along doesn’t mean acting like everyone is the same or believing that everyone should be the same. "Everyone getting along" doesn't mean that there should never be any disagreement. Sometimes you need to put yourself out there and take a strong stand even if it makes others uncomfortable and disrupts the fake kumbayah vibe.

The song "Kumbayah" has really gotten a really bad rap. It didn’t start out as a "huggy kissy, let’s join hands because we are the world" song."Kumbayah" is a soul wrenching Spiritual, a plea for divine intercession from people experiencing the horrors of chattel slaveryand its Jim Crowaftermath. The song "Kumbayah" was first documented in 1926 via an audio recording by Henry Wylie, a member of the North Carolina Gullahh Geechee community and via a written manuscript: that was collected in 1926 by high school principal Julian Parks Boyd from a student named Minnie Lee in North Carolina.



The Gullah Geechees are a sub-set of African Americans. The word "Kumbayah" is a phonetic approximation of the Gullah Geechee words "Come by here."

Just because you want everyone to get along doesn’t mean that you don’t recognize the inequalities that have existed in the past & still exist today. The Occupy Wall Street movement that is spreading around the world coined the phrase “We are the 99%” as a referent to the fact that 1% of the world’s population controls the wealth and power in the world. There are some things that unite all of the 99%. But that doesn’t mean that everyone in that 99% has the exact same immediate needs & concerns and the exact same long term needs & concerns. Invariably, some of those needs & concerns and the most effective strategies for addressing them are going to clash.

Here’s an excerpt from an open letter that Harsha Walia wrote about the Occupy Wall Street movement:

The very idea about the multitude forces a contestation of any one lived experience binding the 99%. Embracing this plurality and having an open heart to potentially uncomfortable truths about the systemic oppression behind the ‘evil corporations and greedy banks’ will strengthen this movement. Ignoring the hierarchies of power between us does not make them magically disappear. It actually does the opposite-it entrenches those inequalities. If we learn from social movements in the past, we observe that the struggle to genuinely address issue of race, class, gender, ability, sexuality, age, and nationality actually do more, rather than less, to facilitate broader participation…

This should not be misunderstood as advocating for a pecking order of issues, it is about understanding that the 99% is not a homogenous group but a web of inter-related communities in struggle.

http://www.racialicious.com/2011/10/15/a-letter-to-the-occupy-together-movement/#more-18523

Harsha Walia also included this quote from Grace Lee Boggs in that same open letter

The coming struggle is a political struggle to take political power out of the hands of the few and put it into the hands of the many. But in order to get this power into the hands of the many, it will be necessary for the many not only to fight the powerful few, but to fight and clash among themselves as well.

That entire post is a great read. I highly recommend it. One of the things I got from that post is that the Occupy Wall Street and all the other Occupy movements in the USA and worldwide aren’t suppose to be a kumbayah cake walk. We must commit to recognizing and addressing the inequalities and injustices that exist not only with regard to the 1%, but with regard to the 99%. And that means that instead of wearing rose colored glasses, we have to be for real about the toxic existence & toxic effect of White privilege, homophobia, gender bias, personal racism, systemic racism, sexism, colorism, colonialism, ableism, and all other negative isms. If we don’t do this, we’ll never reach that higher ground.

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Here's a song that I find to be great inspirational booster when the struggle gets me down:

Higher Ground | Playing For Change



Playing For Change, Sep 6, 2011
Playing For Change is a movement created to inspire and connect the world through music. Join the movement here: http://www.playingforchange.com/membe....
-snip-
http://playingforchange.com - "Higher Ground" is a song that speaks of the perseverance it takes to reach the higher consciousness. Let's all keep trying together, one heart and one song at a time, until we all reach the Higher Ground.

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