"Keeping it real"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Wed, 13 Apr 2005 01:42:47 EDT, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:

>Dave Chappelle did a skit on "Keeping it real" on his show on Comedy
>Central tonight. I did a quick search and there are many bad hits. Any
>dates for this?
>...
>(NEWSPAERARCHIVE)
>...
>   Herald Friday, July 19, 1974 Chicago, Illinois
>...not to do IT then. we did we'd suggest KEEPING IT REAL he said. A
>Wheeling Sod..

If you look at the text for that article, you'll see this is a false hit--
it actually reads "...keeping it real wet".

I believe the hiphop exhortation to "keep it real" emerged in the early
'90s and became widespread by mid-decade.  The rapper Apache of the Flavor
Unit MCs had a song called "Keep It Real" in '93, and Kool Moe Dee had a
song with the same title the following year.

http://www.ohhla.com/anonymous/rap_comp/lost_art/keepreal.rla.txt

These cites from Nexis and Proquest suggest that "keep it real" may have
already been in use by black entertainers c. '91-'92, though the phrase
hadn't necessarily become a fixed idiom yet:

-----
Los Angeles Times, Jul 13, 1991, p. 2
Gooding believes "Boyz" paints a realistic picture of life in
South-Central L.A. "A lot of the experiences come from John Singleton's
personal experiences," he says. "We show it, keep it real and true to
life. The underlying theme of the movie is love and family."
-----
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), Apr 2, 1992, p. 1E
The emergence of such bands goes "hand in hand with the doo-wop/hip-hop
thing - real singing and real instruments," said Billboard magazine's R&B
editor Janine McAdams. "Mechanized and synthesized was the approach of the
'80s. The notion now is that you can create and play your own music and be
funky, and be now. It's funny because coming from Minneapolis, Mint
Condition is carrying on the tradition of Prince and the Time: Keep it
live, keep it loose, keep it real."
-----
Bay State Banner (Boston, Mass.), Jun 4, 1992, p. 2
"Reggie Hudlin, who cast us, gave us our start in the movies," recognizes
Kid. "And we were down for something real versus 'Indiana Jones' type
films." Their concern for keeping it real carries on to "Class Act,"
although as a script "that had been written for some white rat packers and
was sitting around Hollywood, it needed to be dipped in chocolate by
writers we could count on," said Play.
-----

The earliest appearance of "keep it real" on the alt.rap newsgroup is from
Dec. 7, 1993:
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.rap/msg/746c65883502d74a


--Ben Zimmer