@( o･ｪ･)@ Nº160 “It’s on like Donkey Kong” 🐒 💪

I don’t typically say “It’s on like Donkey Kong”. But I do maybe think it. It means you’re ready to throw down. Like, double throw down and get really serious about accomplishing what you maybe had already tried once or twice. I make a lot of rhyming phrases but not this one. But, I wondered, where did it come from?

Peter Hartlaub is the pop culture critic at the San Francisco Chronicle and he made a time line covering the most important moments in the history of this phrase up until 2011. Here are some highlights:

1981: Nintendo’s Donkey Kong, an arcade game that features a plumber dodging fireballs and barrels thrown by a giant ape, becomes an overnight sensation.

Nov. 17, 1992: Rapper Ice Cube brings the phrase to the masses on his The Predator album, in the first line of the track “Now I Gotta Wet’cha.”

It’s on like Donkey Kong

You wanted that fast buck

Now I gotta light that ass up

Here’s the entire track.

June 18, 2000: Rapper and pioneering wordsmith Snoop Dogg uses the term to express his delight over a reconstructed Lakers team that includes Shaquille O’Neal, a young Kobe Bryant and new coach Phil Jackson.

“I really love these hip-hop Lakers. Now with Phil, it’s on like Donkey Kong.”

2000–2005: For the next five years, the phrase exploded in popularity, appearing everywhere from the movie…