A portion of the article discusses the etymology of the word "hip":
"...I don't know the derivation of the term 'Hipster'..., but I could make a totally uninformed guess that it originally referred to hip flasks -- that is, that a 'hipster' carried liquor on his hip instead of hidden in his boot like a 'bootlegger.' I may be totally wrong here, though. I've also heard that 'hip' started with 'hep,' which would mean that my hip flask theory is wrong, and I have no idea where 'hep' came from. I've heard that Ken Kesey has a theory that the word came from Chinese opium smokers who reclined on their hips while they smoked. I've also heard that the word comes from West Africa via the Gullah dialect spoken in the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina. A hipicat denotes a person attuned to his environment, literally with 'eyes open.' Somebody else emailed me that it comes from the military-march utterance "Hup!" as in "Hup-two-three-four," but I don't get what the connection would be here.."
-snip-
I believe that a word can have multiple origins for the same meaning [and for different meanings]. Needless to say, I like the Wolof [Senegal and The Gambia} theory that the origin of the term "hepcat" was popularized by late 1930s/1940s jive talkin jazzmen. As to the "Cry Wolof" debunkers of this theory [see this article for example: http://www.slate.com/id/2110811/], my view is that the fact that the Wolof language has no "h" and the actual word was spelled 'xippi' can be explained by the folk process [since the "x" in that language is pronounced like an "h"].
Jesse Sheidlower and the rest of the "Cry Wolof" crowd argue that "hep" or "hip" didn't gain popular currency by Black folks until it became a 1940s jive * term. *"jive" here meaning "up to date"/"street wise"/"in the latest fashion" and not the alternative contemporary meaning of "sorry ass"/fake"}. Sheidlower and his followers [I suppose he has some] seem to hold the view that since the positive meaning of the word "hip" wasn't a part of Black lingo before the 1930s [i.e. it wasn't used by enslaved African Americans]then African Americans couldn't have gotten it from Africa.
First off, if there were attempts to document the opinion that the word "hip" wasn't used in this way by 17th, 18th, or 19th century African Americans, I'd love to see such research. And even if my ancestors weren't hip to that word then, again, we do folk process well [meaning Black folks love to create new words, and stretch or completely change the meaning of already existing words]. Besides, who's to say that some African American couldn't have traveled to Senegal or The Gambia and brought the word "hipicat" back home with him [or her]? Or a Wolof speaking student or tourist from Senegal or The Gambia could have traveled to the United States, hooked up with some brother or sister and "hepped" him or her to that the word "xippicat".
What an idea! How amazing that Black people from two different continents could have shared culture with each other, and then with the rest of the world!