fo shizzle my nizzle

The phrase fo shizzle my nizzle is a slang expression based on for sure, my nigga and is associated with hip-hop music. Please see our usage note regarding nigga. For sure is an idiom meaning “certainly, surely.”

The practice of substituting -izzle for the end of words was popularized by Northern California rappers in the 1990s. Rapper E-40, nicknamed “The King of Slang,” is often credited with starting the -izzle suffix. During performances of his 1996 song “Rapper’s Ball,” he would use fo’ shizzle interchangeably with the phrase fo’ sheezy, with the dropped R in for as a feature of Black English.

E-40 has said that his usage of -izzle was inspired by musician Frankie Smith’s 1981 song, “Double Dutch Bus.” In the song, Smith includes a section where children play a kind of Double Dutch or Pig Latin language game and insert an -izz infix into words. This -izzle appears to draw on an earlier –iz infix evidenced in the 1970s as way to confuse law enforcement.

While the -izzle emerged in Northern California, it was popularized by a resident to the south. Rapper Snoop Dogg, frequently mistaken as the true inventor of the -izzle suffix, first used forms of his phrase fo shizzle my nizzle in his 2000 single, “Snoop Dogg (What’s My Name Pt. 2).” Snoop Dogg would continue to use this phrase and the -izzle suffix so frequently that his 2002 MTV sketch comedy show was named Doggy Fizzle Televizzle.

Other rappers like Jay-Z and Pitbull took up fo’ shizzle my nizzle in the 2000s, as did many a white teen from Des Moines in their misbegotten efforts to be cool, though largely as a nod to all things Snoop Dogg, who has made fo’ shizzle my nizzle his brand. Shizzle, though, has gone on as a euphemism for “shit” and especially “the shit,” or something that is very good.