Real Nigga Hours

About

"Real Nigga Hours" is an Internet slang term referring to the early morning hours of the day, which is most prominently used on Black Twitter. On popular social media platforms, it is typically invoked when soliciting positive feedback, such as likes or favorites, on a late-night blog post or status update, often accompanied by poorly compressed image macros with heavy artifacts and emojis.

Origin

The exact origin of the expression is currently unknown. The earliest known mention online is in a Facebook^[7] page titled "Real Nigga Hours From 1am-5am Check In #103," which was launched on April 8th, 2011.

Spread

On February 27th, 2014, Urban Dictionary^[1] user Joselaw submitted an entry for "real nigga hours," defining it as "the time in the day between 2:30 a.m. and 5 a.m" (shown below, left). On March 14th, 2015, the Sounds So Good Entertainment YouTube channel uploaded a music video for the hiphop song "Real Nigga Hours" by KiddFinesse (shown below, right).

On April 25th, the "Niggaz Still WILIN" Facebook^[2] page was launched, which since then frequently uploaded photos related to the phrase "click like", a phrase often associated with real nigga hours. On August 18th, the "Real Nigga Hours Who Up" Facebook^[4] page was launched. As of Ocotober 2015, the pages have gathered respectively over 32,000 and 1,500 likes. Niggaz Still WILIN's popularity and activity is believed to have had significant influence in the of real nigga hours. On September 25th, Redditor Ahseyo submitted an image macro featuring a picture of the Spongebob Squarepants character Squidward with the caption "When ur in a coma but it's real nigga hours" to /r/BlackPeopleTwitter^[5] (shown below).

On September 26th, YouTuber Frogman uploaded a montage parody titled "Real Nigga Hours," featuring clips from WorldStarHipHop videos, Vines and various image macros (shown below, left). On September 29th, Redditor RD_Is_Best_Pony posted an image macro titled "Real Nigga Hours Smash Dat Upvote If You Up Tbh Fam" to the /r/BraveryJerk^[6] subreddit, which contained references to The Barber, Unexpected John Cena, Why the fuck you lyin and Deez Nuts memes (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Many image macros in the series pose the question "Who up?" followed by requests for likes with phrases like "click like" and "smash the like" (shown below).

Search Interest

External References