If you listen to Hip-Hop long enough — especially drill, trap or street rap — you’re eventually going to hear somebody mention “the opps.” In modern slang, an opp is essentially an opponent, enemy or rival: somebody who is on the other side of a conflict. “Opps,” the plural version, can refer to a rival group, crew, neighborhood or simply anybody viewed as working against you. Depending on the context, that could mean anything from a serious real-world enemy to somebody you just don’t get along with.
The word is generally understood as a shortened version of “opposition” or “opponent,” and its modern usage became heavily associated with Chicago’s drill scene during the early 2010s. Artists from that movement regularly used “opp” and “opps” when referring to rival crews and people connected to opposing neighborhoods. As drill exploded beyond Chicago, the language traveled with it, becoming part of the larger vocabulary of Hip-Hop in cities across the country and eventually around the world.
That history is important because an “opp” originally carried considerably more weight than the way the term is sometimes used online today. Within street and drill music, an opp could be a genuine adversary rather than simply somebody you disliked. That is why phrases involving “catching,” “checking for,” or confronting the opps show up so frequently in the genre. Rappers including Chief Keef, Lil Durk, King Louie and others from Chicago’s drill generation helped push that vocabulary into mainstream rap, where “the opps” eventually became almost universally understood as the people on the other side.
Like a lot of slang born from Hip-Hop and Black culture, though, “opp” has gotten much broader — and sometimes much less serious — as it has entered everyday language. On TikTok, X, Instagram and in regular conversation, people jokingly call almost anybody an opp. Your favorite team’s biggest rival can be the opps. A coworker competing with you for a promotion could jokingly become an opp. Even a friend who steals your food or does something mildly annoying might get hit with, “You an opp now.” The humor often comes from applying a word with such serious origins to an extremely unserious situation.
There are plenty of variations too. Someone might say “the opps are watching” when they feel like rivals or haters are waiting for them to mess up. Calling somebody an “opp” directly means they’ve essentially been placed on the opposing side, while saying somebody is “moving like an opp” suggests they’re behaving suspiciously, disloyally or more like an enemy than a friend. Because the word has become so common online, its exact intensity depends heavily on context: sometimes it signals genuine conflict, while other times it is basically the modern equivalent of jokingly calling someone a hater.
Here’s where Hip-Hop history makes things interesting: modern “opp” is not the same thing as Naughty by Nature’s famous “O.P.P.” Back in 1991, Treach, Vin Rock and DJ Kay Gee turned “O.P.P.” into a national catchphrase with their breakout single of the same name. In that song, the clean interpretation was “Other People’s Property,” with the acronym serving as a playful euphemism for being romantically or sexually involved with somebody else’s partner. Vin Rock later explained that the phrase grew out of a friend joking about being down with “O.P.M.” — “Other People’s Money” — before Naughty by Nature flipped the concept into O.P.P.
“O.P.P.” became enormous. Built around a recognizable piece of the Jackson 5’s “ABC,” the song reached the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 and helped transform Naughty by Nature from a New Jersey rap group into a national act. More importantly, the question associated with its chorus became a piece of pop culture well beyond Hip-Hop. Decades before teenagers were casually calling somebody an opp on TikTok, Naughty by Nature had already made those same three letters instantly recognizable — just with an entirely different definition.
So if someone asks “What does OPP mean?”, the answer depends heavily on the era and context. In most modern rap, slang and social media conversations, an opp is an opponent, rival or enemy — with the term tracing much of its modern popularity to drill and street rap. However, if someone asks whether you’re “down with O.P.P.,” they’re probably taking things back to Naughty by Nature and a completely different kind of trouble. Same letters, two very different pieces of Hip-Hop vocabulary.
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