Billed Cap Emoji

A blue baseball-style cap with a rounded crown and a stiff bill. Emojipedia says it represents casual headwear for sports and outdoor activities. But that's the boring meaning.

The real story: 🧢 became the visual shorthand for the Gen Z slang "cap" (lying) and "no cap" (no lie). When someone sends 🧢 in response to a statement, they're calling it a lie. "No 🧢" means "I'm being completely honest." This slang usage has made 🧢 one of the fastest-growing emojis of the early 2020s.

The slang traces back to African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Merriam-Webster defines "no cap" as meaning "genuinely; truthfully." Dictionary.com notes that "to cap" has meant "to brag or exaggerate" in Black slang since at least the early 1900s. The earliest documented printed use of "cappin'" in this sense appears in Willie D's 1989 Geto Boys track "Put the Fuckin' Gun Away", where "high cappin'" describes boastful behavior. The earliest documented "no cappin'" in print is on Chief Keef and Gino Marley's 2011 Bang mixtape track "Just In Case", six full years before Atlanta rappers Young Thug and Future released the song that mainstreamed it.

Google Trends tells the story clearly: 🧢 was level with 🎩 Top Hat in 2019 (both around 17-20). By Q4 2021, 🧢 had surged to 95 while 🎩 dropped to 35. The slang drove a 5.6x increase in search interest. The phrase has cooled since 2022, but the emoji has held its position. That's the surprise. More on that in the chart below.

🧢 has two completely different user bases that rarely overlap.

For Gen Z and internet culture, it's the lie-detector emoji. Replying with just "🧢" to someone's statement calls it a lie. "No 🧢" emphasizes honesty. It appears in TikTok comments, Twitter/X replies, and group chats as a quick BS-calling tool.

For sports and fashion, it's a literal baseball cap. Team caps, snapback culture, streetwear, and New Era collaborations all use 🧢 without any slang connotation.

The slang meaning has become so dominant that some older users have stopped using 🧢 for actual caps, worried it'll be misread.

The slang "cap" (lying) has deep roots in AAVE. Green's Dictionary of Slang traces "to cap" as meaning "to surpass" or "to brag" back to the 1940s, with connections to the ritualized insult practice of "capping" from the 1960s. The earliest documented use of "high cappin'" in print sits in Willie D's 1989 Geto Boys track "Put the Fuckin' Gun Away." The compound "no cappin'" surfaces in print on Chief Keef and Gino Marley's 2011 Bang mixtape track "Just In Case": "I'm not with the lackin', no slackin', no cappin'."

The term went mainstream in 2017 when Atlanta rappers Young Thug and Future released "No Cap" on the Super Slimey joint mixtape. The track debuted at #62 on the Billboard Hot 100 and the album landed at #2 on the Billboard 200. Their combined influence spread the phrase from Atlanta hip-hop into wider internet culture. By 2020-2021, "no cap" had crossed over to Gen Z slang regardless of musical taste.

The 🧢 emoji was approved in Unicode 10.0 in June 2017, four months before "Super Slimey" dropped. This was coincidental (the emoji was proposed as a literal baseball cap), but the timing was perfect. Gen Z adopted 🧢 as the visual symbol for "cap" (lie) almost immediately.

There's a quieter cultural shift underneath the rise. "No cap" as an honesty disclaimer fills the same conversational slot that "no homo" filled in 2000s hip-hop, the East Harlem slang Cam'ron and the Diplomats popularized. "No homo" required the speaker to disavow homosexual reading; "no cap" only requires them to disavow lying. The semantic real estate is the same, the politics are not. By the time Slate's 2009 piece on "no homo" had pushed it into mainstream backlash, the door was open for a replacement that did the work without the homophobia. "No cap" walked through it.

Google Trends confirms the visual shift: 🧢 search interest rose from 17 in early 2019 to a peak of 95 in Q4 2021, a 5.6x increase. It overtook 🎩 Top Hat (which had been more popular) by Q3 2020 and never looked back.

Approved in Unicode 10.0 (2017) as U+1F9E2U+1F9E2 BILLED CAP. The proposal, L2/16-357 'Baseball Cap Emoji Proposal', was authored by Eric Dash and Jennifer 8. Lee in October 2016. Lee was the same proposal-machine behind the dumpling, fortune cookie, and chopsticks emojis, the Emojination co-founder who has shepherded more food and object emojis through the UTC than any other independent advocate. The proposal listed it as 'baseball cap' but Unicode's CLDR shipped it under the more generic name 'billed cap' to cover trucker hats, dad caps, snapbacks, and 5-panels too.

• •Merriam-Webster added "no cap" to their slang dictionary, defining it as "genuinely; truthfully."
• •The 🧢 proposal, L2/16-357, was authored by Eric Dash and Jennifer 8. Lee in October 2016. Lee is also responsible for shepherding the dumpling, fortune cookie, and chopsticks emojis through Unicode.
• •"To cap" as meaning "to brag" appears in Green's Dictionary of Slang dating to the 1940s. The earliest documented printed use is in Willie D's 1989 Geto Boys track "Put the Fuckin' Gun Away."
• •🧢 was approved in Unicode 10.0 in June 2017, four months before Young Thug and Future's "No Cap" dropped on Super Slimey. The track debuted at #62 on the Billboard Hot 100.
• •Google Trends shows 🧢 peaking at 95 in Q4 2021 (5.6x its 2019 level) while 🎩 Top Hat dropped to 35.
• •The earliest documented printed use of "no cappin'" sits on Chief Keef and Gino Marley's 2011 Bang mixtape track "Just In Case": "I'm not with the lackin', no slackin', no cappin'." Six years before Future and Young Thug.
• •New Era Cap Company has held the exclusive MLB on-field cap license since 1993, manufactures 20+ million caps per year, holds annual revenue around $1B, and signed an exclusive NHL deal in July 2024 plus the acquisition of '47 Brand in August 2024. Almost every actual cap in the world that 🧢 represents was made by them.
• •"No cap" displaced "no homo" as the affirmation phrase on Black Twitter. Cam'ron and the Diplomats popularized "no homo" as East Harlem slang in the early 2000s; Slate's 2009 piece marked the start of the mainstream backlash. "No cap" filled the same conversational slot without the homophobia.
• •🧢 appears in MLB and NFL team fan accounts without any slang connotation. Same emoji, completely different use, most fans using it for team merch have no idea about the Gen Z slang layer.

• •🧢 is U+1F9E2U+1F9E2. Unicode name: BILLED CAP. CLDR: "billed cap." Common shortcodes: :billed_cap::billed_cap: (Slack), :baseball_cap::baseball_cap: (some platforms).

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