When did the expression “hustle culture” emerge?

Question

The expression “hustle culture” refers to workplace environments that place an intense focus on productivity, ambition, and success, with little regard for rest, self care, or any sense of work-life balance. (www.talkspace.com)

As a trend it dates back a few decades ago:

In fact, this culture has existed since the 1970s, at which time the development of the industry was accelerating and employees were required to work at a fast pace without any time limits. In 1990, technology companies also began to dominate the world so that a new standard emerged for young people to overwork. (www.bfi.co)

Curiously Google Ngram has no reference about this expression so, apparently, it is a quite recent coinage.

I can guess it is an American expression, but when and possibly by whom was “hustle culture” coined?

Answer 1

Hip Hop Hustler to Side Hustle to Hustle Culture

In US usage, "hustle" started taking on a meaning of "work hard" in Hip Hop in the 1990s. (maybe earlier, but that's when I became a aware of it.)

See 2Pacs Discography for a quick example: he guest appears on a track called 4 tha Hustlas in 1997, and makes an appearance on an album whose name includes Hustlin' in 1998.

In this usage, hustle means "hard working" but in a context that is entrepreneurial and possibly illegal. The implication is that it's hard work to get rich selling drugs, but real "hustlas" can do it.

By the early 2000s, this lead to the birth of the "side hustle." The side hustle is the idea that you can run a small business or other money making venture in your off time, often in the hope that it can grow to replace your day job.

In this meaning it loses the implication of illegal activities.

Eventually, people began identifying this as "Hustle Culture" with the negative connotation OP identified.

NPR Code Switch Weighs In

After I wrote all this, I found an NPR article from 2020 that more or less agrees with my analysis, though they trace the roots in African American culture back much further, and highlight the rise of the gig economy.

The gig economy part rings very true to me - hustling was associated with gig work, so when gig work seemed cool and new, hustling was positive, but as gig work was perceived as more and more coercive, hustling took on a more negative implication.

I expect the negative connotations likely first appeared around 2014.

Answer 2

The earliest reference I can find to it in the modern sense comes from this 2011 BBC article:

He said: "Education... takes second place to notions of entrepreneurship as, predominantly our young men, get involved in the informality of what the University of the West Indies academics, Witter and Gayle, have called a 'hustle culture'."

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to track down the paper where Witter and Gayle supposedly use the phrase, so I'm not sure if they coined it or just helped to popularize it.

Edit: I did find this citation in another paper:

Witter, M. (1980) Hustle Economy: Essay in Conceptualisation, The University of the West Indies, Mona.

I'm not sure if that book ever uses the phrase "hustle culture" (as opposed to "hustle economy"), since I can't find a copy online. But it is by the Witter (of "Witter and Gayle") mentioned above; if it uses the phrase "hustle culture," then it would predate the 1981 citation below.

Either way, it does seem like this phrase originated in the Caribbean, ignoring scattered references elsewhere.

Answer 3

Way back, it seems:

HUSTLE CULTURE IN AMERICA and a sub-heading: Hustle Culture Absurdities

The article is basically a diatribe against women pursuing activities through clubs and courses, which this author and another called the "Self-Course Movement".

Please note: the word hustle does not appear in the actual writing and is not defined. It is quite amusing as it is so dated.

Please do click through and read it.

Date of Publication: January 28, 1910, Page 67 in Google Books

T.P.s Weekly - A British Publication

Answer 4

I can't find the coinage, but here's an early instance of it from one of the many volumes of El Caribe Contemporaneo, a periodical review published by the University of Texas in the late 20th century. This particular passage is from the 1981 publication:

Es necesario tomar en cuenta esta presión sobre las condiciones de vida, para explicar la hustle-culture (cultura de hiperactividad laboral), que comprende a la gran mayoría de la población surinamesa.

In order to explain hustle culture (culture of hyperactive labor), it's necessary to take into account the living conditions of the general Surinamese population.

It's kinda cheating because this is in Spanish, but the fact that the authors chose to use an English phrase (though it's hyphenated) means that it was at least a somewhat established term. Presumably, 'culture of hyperactive labor' could be extended to describe a culture where workers are expected to work long hours, perhaps to an excessive degree.

And this snippet from Bobbi Lee, Indian rebel' (1990) talks of a hustle culture that "keeps capitalism alive."

But judging by the results from Google Books, the majority of the term's usage has been in the past decade or so, especially in the modern sense.

Answer 5

Looking specifically for references to workplace go-go (not side hustles, not entrepreneurship, not scams, not the dance), as defined by the OP . . .

. . . workplace environments that place an intense focus on productivity, ambition, and success, with little regard for rest, self care, or any sense of work-life balance.

This took quite a bit of searching, one year at a time, and I won’t proclaim that this is the very first occurrence of “hustle culture” (the term, not the concept), but I’m going to go with 2010, based on the below excerpt from a Forbes article.

Ten Questions For Billionaire Darwin Deason
Forbes
Nov 4, 2010

Deason who founded Affiliated Computer Services in 1988 as a bank data processor, credits much of his success to having instituted a “hustle” culture in which people come in earlier, stay later and do more for the customer than the next guy. Deason, who sold ACS to Xerox in February, had this advice for fellow self-starters.
. . .
8) What book should every entrepreneur read?
My hustle quotation book, which features hustle quotations from a lot of great leaders, and the Bible.

_{Source: Forbes — Ten Questions For Billionaire Darwin Deason}