slang
Urban Dictionary example:
"you can have the bed, I'll rock the couch"
Earliest example I can think of:
RUN D.M.C. "It's Tricky" — "It's tricky to rock a rhyme . . . "
Now it seems pervasive. Is there something else that put it on the map or did it just take 25+ years to slowly filter into the mainstream from Ebonics (unlike, e.g., "Word Up," which seems to have risen and fallen over the same period).
I think that stack goes back relatively far in its meaning of "a large quantity". From the book Slang and its analogues past and present written in 1903:
The entry provides the phrase "stacks of the ready" to mean "plenty of money". I think this phrase, in the prevailing years, was shortened to the slang stack, which also took on the meaning of $1000.
Although I am loathe to use this as a source, Urban Dictionary lists that:
one stack = 1 G
That is, one stack is equivalent to one grand which is $1000. The use of stack in this fashion is very much slang, so it is not in more established dictionaries. However, given that Urban Dictionary is a crowd-sourced source which sometimes contains the most current uses of words, and that this meaning of stack is entered twice, I am sure that a stack is equal to $1000.
I think that rocks actually came about even earlier as a verb than the 1950s. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, by the 1920s rocks was a sexual euphemism in the US. In 1931, it started to mean:
To play or dance to popular music with a fast, vigorous rhythm and a strong beat, esp. exuberantly. Cf. to rock and roll at Phrases 1b.
Then, just a few years later, in 1938 a related meaning was added:
Of popular music: to possess a fast, vigorous rhythm with a strong beat; to exhibit the energy and drive characteristic of such music. Cf. rock n.3 2, rocking adj. 4a.
The earliest uses of the word in this sense are:
Rocks was first used to refer to jazz, and it was already being used to describe something with "the energy and drive characteristic of such movement". However, the OED writes that the slang usage emerged in the 1960s:
slang (orig. U.S.). To be full of energy, life, and excitement; to be excellent. Freq. in exclamatory phrase —— rocks!
The first known use in the form is:
1969 Times-Bull. (Van Wert, Ohio) 3 Oct. 2 (advt.) Bored? Uptight? In a box? Weekend bowling really rocks!
So the term originated with jazz, and took off from there.
Best Answer
Firstly, while I see what you're getting at, I don't think rock is a synonym for create or utilize in the phrase rock a rhyme or rock the bells. I think a more appropriate synonym is excel at or rule. I think this sense is also what we mean by "rocking the couch." — That couch is mine, I'm totally have the best sleep of my life on that couch, you have the bed, no problem!
This is the same sense as you rock! Yes, I ROCK THAT COUCH. OK, I'm being a bit facetious here, but you see why those two examples cited here as "origins" don't connect exactly with the rock the couch meaning.
It's hard to pin down when this sense of rock became to mean what you're trying to express, because there is no hard line separating that sense from the older sense. To rock has meant to dance/create music/party/excel for a long time. When can the "new" sense be completely extracted from the "old" usage, as the word gradually becomes used in nearly every situation? (qv. "nice")
Ultimately, this meaning of rock has its origins in the phrase rock and roll, coming from a euphemistic verb phrase common among Black speakers of english meaning "to have sex". (Move back and forth.) This hidden meaning appeared in song titles and dance styles since the early 1930s. Which gives, of course, a whole new meaning to the phrase I rock the couch.
I found this quote in an article about Scotty Morris in the August 1988 issue of SPIN: