Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. wonderful, excellent, the very best; sometimes ext. as too fucking much.

c.1895		F. Norris Vandover and the Brute (1914) 78: ‘This is too much,’ he gasped. ‘Such magnificence, such purple and fine linen.’.
1936		A.E. Duckett ‘Truckin ’round Brooklyn’ in N.Y. Age 6 June 6/7: You’re cuttin’ Claude, / You’re just ‘too much’.
1944		Cab Calloway New Hepsters Dict. in Calloway (1976) 260: too much (adj.): term of highest praise. Ex., ‘You are too much!’.
1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 114: Jimmy Noone’s band was too much.
1958		G. Lea Somewhere There’s Music 155: The City is too much — and that’s where I want to be.
1968		N. Heard Howard Street 23: Hip let out a roar of mirth. ‘Baby, you too much.’.
1977		C. McFadden Serial 62: Harvey [...] you really are too much.
1987		T. Wolfe Bonfire of the Vanities 45: Hey, Judge, you’re too much!
1999		K. Sampson Powder 355: Asbury Park! Too much!
2000		C. Cook Robbers (2001) 233: Shit, this is too much, man. You for real?
2008		in J. Miller Getting Played 86: ‘The girls, they cool, but they just think they too much’.

2. unpleasant, disgusting or overwhelming.

1935		Z.N. Hurston Mules and Men (1995) 21: The raw likker known locally as coon dick was too much. The minute it touched my lips, the top of my head flew off. I spat it out.
1968		N. von Hoffman We are the People Our Parents Warned Us Against 94: Jail was a bummer [...] the matron was too much, man.
1981		S. Berkoff Decadence in Decadence and Other Plays (1985) 8: Is Chartreuse with pink just too too much.
2022		J. Hannaham Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit 47: Yo, this here New York Experience be too much a too much.

3. extreme, with an inference of absurd, ludicrous.

1943		H.A. Smith Life in a Putty Knife Factory (1948) 195: I was willing until the Crosbys demanded that I describe him as being thirty-three. That, as Artemus Ward used to put it, wuz 2 mutch.
1963		J. Rechy City of Night 51: Youre too much [...] Why! whoevuh heard of a nigguh Queen?
1970		T. Southern Blue Movie (1974) 94: You guys are too much — you ought to have an act.
1979		B. Gutcheon New Girls (1982) 108: Hey, no kidding. You’re too much.
1980		G. Liddy Will 282: Martinez is a highly intelligent man [...] and when [Judge] Sirica went into his Junior G-man act, Martinez went into his ‘pardon-me-for-talking-in-your-face-Señor’ Frito Bandito routine. It was just too much.
1997		C. Hiaasen Lucky You 347: She was too much.
2019		P. Baker Fabulosa 298/2: too much excessive, over the top (can be either good or bad, depending on the context).