Hell-to-the-No

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Hawk Reeves. How are you?

Hi, doing fine. Hawk?

Hawk, like the bird.

Like the bird, okay.

Oh, well welcome to the program, Hawk.

Thank you very much.

I have a question for you.

My family and I are extreme fans of Tyler Perry and his character, Medea.

We were watching the movie, Medea Goes to Jail.

On this movie, Medea uses a terminology of speech that I’ve never heard anyplace before.

She’s speaking to one of the other characters.

She uses the terminology, hell to the no, instead of saying hell no.

Another time, an emphasis of her name, it’s ma to the D-E-A, instead of just saying Medea.

This I found very curious.

I know that Tyler Perry uses a lot of cultural and ethnic enhancements in this character.

Oh, sure, yeah. He’s got to make her seem real.

He’s got to give her a real voice and a real kind of personality, right?

And that’s awesome, and she’s an awesome character.

His films are about as far out as I can go with letting my grandkids watch.

But noticing this, it made me start thinking, where does this speech pattern come from or this expression, type of expression come from?

Is it ethnic? Is it cultural? Is it geographical? Is it gang-related?

Where does this come from? Because if this is a speech pattern that’s fixing to spread through our society, I’ve got some grandkids that are going to be picking this up.

Well, let’s talk a little bit about this in a larger context.

Hell to the No, as I understand it, is just kind of a more popular manifestation of a form of rhetorical emphasis.

And I’ve made something really simple sound complicated.

But what it is, and it looks like it’s done the job on you.

It’s a way of emphasizing that you really mean hell and no.

And you’ll find it.

You’ll find it not only in hip-hop lyrics, but you will find it.

Maybe not with the word hell,

But you will find this type of spelling out a word to emphasize it

In the speech of black preachers.

It is the type of thing that they do.

And even parents do this.

We’re all familiar with the idea of saying,

I mean no, N-O, no, right?

And we spell it out to emphasize it.

And hell to the N-O or hell to the no or H-E-L-L to the N-O,

Which is another form of it.

All of these ways are just emphasizing through spelling that you really mean it.

And it’s a curious thing.

There’s not much been written on this.

I have asked some experts in black discourse about this thing, and they’re like me.

They think that this is the history of this, but they’re not 100% sure because so little research has been done.

It’s hard to track this stuff.

But I’m certain that you will find this in hip-hop lyrics as far back as 20 or even 30 years ago where somebody says hip, hip to the hop, H-I-P to the H-O-P to don’t stop, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, yeah.

They’re spelling it out.

And sometimes they spell it hip and sometimes they spell it hop or they spell it some other word.

But it’s a way of emphasizing.

And actually, the other thing that it does, when you are doing something that’s got a cadence or a rhyme, such as a song or such as a speech, a speech is definitely something that’s got rhythm to it.

Especially within a black preacher.

That’s right.

White Southern Baptist churches where I’ve seen those.

Yeah, yeah, I’ve been there, and that’s a performance.

They’re not reading narration.

They are performing there, and there’s a melody that’s coming out from the front of the room.

In any case, to just kind of bring this all to our head, what’s happening is sometimes you need another syllable.

And so what you’ve got in front of you is a chance to spell a word to add another syllable in there.

And sometimes you need another rhyme.

And sometimes that letter that you’re saying is another rhyme.

And sometimes you just need a way of slowing it down or emphasizing the beats.

And you can do this by saying H-E-L-L to the N-O.

And you can feel the rhythm automatically come out of you when you spell something, right?

Okay, I can see that.

Yeah, I very much appreciate it. Thank you for your guide.

Thank you so much for calling us today.

Thanks, Hawk.

And I’m glad to be of some help to you.

Bye-bye.

Take care. Bye-bye.

Martha, in looking into this further, Hell to the Know was used most memorably, I believe,

In the first episode of the reality TV show Being Bobby Brown.

Whitney Houston used it.

Oh, really?

Yeah, it was much talked about in the newspapers the next day.

This is in 2005, although, as we said before, the expression is much older than that.

Hail to the no.

Hail to the no.

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