It started as gang lingo, à la 1970s Crips out of L.A., that has made its way into pop culture, this slang term “O.G.” It stands for “Original Gangsta” or “Original Gangster.” And today, dressed in trendy, hip-hop vibes, it simply means the original, the pioneer, something exceptional and authentic, with a connotation of significance and respect.

That’s what four-time NHRA Top Fuel champion Antron Brown, known to slip into urban jargon now and again, called drag racing “the OG of racing.” He said, “Every form of racing originated from us.”

Like hip-hop is a blend of music, art, and dance, Brown is a mash-up of thrill-seeker, student of excellence, and sharp businessman. Whether he’s a shrewd entrepreneur because he’s a keen observer or vice versa, the team owner of AB Motorsports always has an eye out for what drives the sport, how to grow the sport, how it’s trending, and who can factor in the process.

“What makes our sport so special is that people can resonate with it from when they were a kid. We just got to get them out there to tell their story. And then once you get that, it’s going to start opening eyes to so many other people that might not be a drag racing fan. They don’t realize that we’re the OGs of racing. Drag racing is the OG of racing. Every form of racing originated came from us. It went from here to circle track to this, to that, everything and all your big circle-track racers [were drag-racers first],” Brown says.

He cited NASCAR notables Rick Hendrick, Jack Roush, and Joe Gibbs. Of those, Hendrick has come full circle, jumping back into alliances with John Force Racing in the nitro ranks and KB Titan Racing / Greg Anderson in Pro Stock. Rick Ware, whose career is rooted in sports-car racing, has become involved with Clay Millican’s Top Fuel team that is preparing to expand to include Tony Schumacher.

But Brown has kept tabs on who peeks in on drag racing from other avenues.

“Our sport has always attracted a lot of different people from all walks of life, it is plain and simple, where there’s people that you don’t even know that are into our sport because they’re not vocal about it,” he said. “That’s the hardest part is getting people. We need all the people that love our sport to be more vocal.”

For example, last year and this year at In-N-Out Burger Pomona Dragstrip, legendary pop-music songwriter and producer Jimmy Jam was a guest of Brown.

“He DMd me on my Instagram, been a drag racing fan forever,” Brown said of the music-industry VIP who composed and produce hit songs for the likes of Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, Usher, Mary J. Blige, Boyz II Men, Chaka Khan, and Earth, Wind & Fire. “He’s from Minneapolis. He used go to Brainerd, Minn., with his dad as a kid. He came out to the racetrack and hung out with me in my pit.”

When Brown was in Los Angeles in March to visit with FOX Sports executives and promote the 2025 NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series, he and Jimmy Jam dined at the famous Mastro’s steakhouse, where Jimmy Jam brought Brown “the original Janet album and Control album and Rhythm Nation album that he produced in rap and gave it to me as a present. So when you see different stuff like that,” he said, “I think that’s what it’s all about, just trying to rekindle that.”

What Brown said he sees is that “everybody’s seeing the value of our sport.”

However, he indicated a whole lot more people might be attracted to drag racing if it were to do a couple of things: if the NHRA would make the stakes higher and if the drivers would give off an edgier mood.

The NHRA did implement a bonus for the “regular-season winner,” starting this season, something Brown, among others, had lobbied for. (“People are going to race to be first. They’re not going to race to be in the Countdown, he urged. Don’t just give points – give them money.”)

But Brown went further, pushing for change to the Countdown: “I understand they’re trying to make it interesting for the fans, but my true opinion is if you want to make it interesting for the fans, and the teams get better, is make the stakes higher. People perform better. You’ve got to make the stakes bigger. Don’t race for $500,000. Race for $1 million dollars.

“You can get people to watch poker on TV and have big ratings. What’s interesting about watching poker? The only reason I like watching poker is if I’m playing poker.

But people’s going to watch poker because the stakes that they play for. That’s why they watch it. This cat just won $3 million dollars. Check him out!” Brown said. “This is something I always said – If I told you to tune in on ESPN and let’s just watch some people play blackjack, I ain’t going to watch them play blackjack. If I told you they were playing for $15 million dollars, you are going to tune in and watch that blackjack tournament, aren’t you? You going to see who’s going to win that $15 million. That’s the difference. You raise the stakes, you raise the competition. You ain’t got to do Countdowns and stuff like that, because the stakes are so big. More teams are going to dig in and go after it.

And why do people watch NASCAR for three hours? I find it interesting, but the most interesting parts of the race is when they’re sprinting for something, like at the last 20 laps [or ] the last three laps they start drilling them down. You’ve got to put [significant] stakes up for grabs,” he said.

Brown’s business savvy showed when he suggested that the NHRA needs to acquire more marketing partners.

“We’ve got to get more partners involved in the organization so we can pay those kinds of payouts. You get what I mean? Because our payouts haven’t changed for I don’t know how many years. I know it’s been like this for a long time,” he said. “And I know with a TV package as it grows, we can get those partners in that we can do those types of things. That’s what we need to shoot for.”

Drivers can play a role in making the sport more enticing to fans, Brown said.

“We’re nice and huggy, where I think we need to show ’em more of who we really truly are, because we’re all gladiators,” he said. “We go to war. Like Brittany Force, she has a pretty smile. She looks like a Barbie doll, but she ain’t no Barbie doll when she puts that helmet on. I tell people all the time. I say she is a monster, and she says, ‘Antron, why do you say that about me?’ I say, ‘You try to gut me every time when you race me. You don’t cut no .080 lights. You cut a .050 or .040 light, trying to put me on the trailer.’ So we need to tell more of that.”

He agreed with the Shirley Muldowney approach. During her racing days, she said, “I’m not going to get out of the car and say something nice about somebody. They took money out of my pocket.”

Brown said, “Well, absolutely. I always say it – and people think it’s funny when I say, ’That joker’s trying to take my lunch money.’ I was more on the comedy side, but I was being who I am, and I’m telling the truth, because that’s how I look at it.” He said, “I don’t care if there’s a seven-year-old girl over there [in the opposite lane], I’m not going to cut her any slack. I’m just speaking the truth of my competitive nature. I’ve always been like that.”

“We need to have some more combatants against each other,” he said. And I think that will make our sport where you could get some more storylines and people could see it, because that’s what people resonate with. That’s why they like watching UFC. That’s why they like watching a boxing match. Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather, they were friends, but when they put those gloves on, they were talking junk and everything to each other, and then they were backing it up with what they were doing in the ring. And that’s what we need, not putting something that’s fake, but just letting our true inner competitive nature out.”

Brown – who has studied the habits of the sport’s elite and the cream of the corporate crop – said what’s authentic is “staying true to the roots and just telling those stories so other people can resonate and actually make our sport where it needs to be. And that’s at the top.”

What else would anyone expect from an O.G.?