Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(orig. US) difficulties, aggravation, impudent or argumentative talk.

1922		Morn. Tulsa Dly World (OK) 7 May 29/7: Static - Conversation that means nothing.
1925		D. Hammett ‘The Scorched Face’ Story Omnibus (1966) 74: Your guesses all sound like a lot of static to me.
1948		T. Thursday ‘Movie Stuff’ in Detective Story Apr. 🌐 ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, same time, same police station.’ ‘We’ll tune in [...] [a]nd hope we get more than static.’.
1956		J. Blake letter 26 Mar. in Joint (1972) 79: I’ve encountered a certain amount of flak and static from Sandy’s cell partner.
1967		C. Cooper Jr Farm (1968) 87: It’s you who thinks I need to help. That’s why I’m getting all this static.
1977		E. Torres Q&A 101: You’ve had the minimum of static in the street, right?
1987		Ice-T ‘Six in the Morning’ 🎵 About 4 am we crashed the Deuce / We never catch static ’cause my boys got juice.
1993		Dr Dre ‘Deeez Nuuuts’ 🎵 But uh, rat-tat-tat-tat that ass / Startin’ static with Dre, make way for the AK.
2001		(con. 1990s) in J. Miller One of the Guys 137: ‘[If] we already have static with them, then you know, they probably gonna get killed’.
2005		L. Theroux Call of the Weird (2006) 185: Not that I thought I was in danger of starting any ‘static’ but I felt self-conscious.
2012		T. Piccirilli Last Kind Words 66: Some old-timer gave me static about proper channels.