Originally a label for a 1960s Kingston street-youth subculture: sharply dressed young men in slim suits, narrow ties, pork-pie hats and dark glasses, associated with sound-system dances, ska and rocksteady, and (in the moral panics of the day) with violence and the burgeoning urban gang scene of post-independence Jamaica. The figure was immortalised in songs like Desmond Dekker's "007 (Shanty Town)" and the Wailers' "Rude Boy". When ska reached Britain via the Windrush generation, the rude-boy aesthetic was adopted and adapted by the UK mod, skinhead and especially the late-1970s two-tone revival (The Specials, Madness, The Beat), becoming a defining look of British working-class youth culture. Today the term is also used loosely and affectionately for any bold or fashion-forward young man.
mi grandfather still talk about the proper rude boys dem in Trench Town back in the day
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Regional slang from around the English-speaking world — British, Australian, Irish, Caribbean, Nigerian, Filipino, AAVE, and the hyphenated-English dialects that make the internet sound local.
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