How Surnames Represents Identity and Originality

There is a certain word that rappers today have forgotten to add to their own image. The word is originality. Originality is the real definition of genuine and authentic hip hop. It’s what makes people stand out from others, it’s that uniqueness that breaks societal norms and reaches their audience. Legends such as Tupac, Biggie, Nas, and newer artist like Kanye West, Drake, and Chance the Rapper all are known as great artists because of their originality. In order to be noticed in the hip-hop culture, one must achieve the goal of being original and creating an identity by being oneself.

According to a study called The Cultural Commodification of Identity: Hip-Hop Authenticity, conducted by researcher Rachael K. Quick, she defines “hip-hop authenticity as a genuine performance of a hip-hop identity, which is in accordance with the character of the individual performer, including cultural and personal nuances that are incorporated in the hip-hop artists’ persona.”

University of Florida researcher Ginger L. Jacobson, Realness, and Hoodness: Authenticity in hip hop as discussed by adolescent fans, says that she believes a fan’s awareness of various artists’ authenticity helps define that fan’s level of hipness. She says to identify the real is a major preoccupation within hip hop culture. She believes that identification of what is real has ramifications for shaping individuals’ conceptions of what makes anyone, including themselves, real.”

“For a hip hop fan, knowing what it takes to be real is a kind of insider knowledge. When fans assess the authenticity of rappers they are asserting their own subcultural capital in the process. By understanding how fans assess the subcultural capital of rappers, we can see a relationship to how fans understand their own social positions within hip-hop culture,” Jacobson says.

The question now is how does an artist achieve the goal of being original and branding their self to their audience? The answer starts with the artist coming up with their name that represents not just their music, but, also, represents who they are as individuals.

“Every artist has a persona; I don’t care if what genre you are in or even if you an actor or whatever. For the most part, when you have cameras on or you running the recording there is a persona. There’s a profile that maybe when they go home and have dinner with their family there not exactly the same, but at the same time the more genuine, the more real you can be as an artist and connect with by who you are and the more you like. the more you’re going to bridge that connection with them and not make you feel like you’re not so unobtainable that it’s something they’ve seen on TMZ,” says the president and founder of Steam Factory Media, Chad “Chadex” Pardon.

Pardon discussed how originality was the key to marketing and branding hip artists. He said that he noticed this when he helped manage and rebrand local hip hop artist Mark Millez.

“When I started Steam Factory Media, I had a young guy come in and ask me to make him some shirts. He was a local rapper and he’s a white boy, he was going by the name Prophet…. I went to his show and he was pretty dang good, he was performing with some other locals that were pretty well known that I didn’t know at the time… The biggest thing that I notice about him was, when you look up Prophet there were a ton of Prophets out there, so if I really wanted to work with this guy he needed to have his own brand and identity, something that if we were going to look to publish his music and get it out there for sale legitimately.”

He said when working with the hip hop artist, he had to take a look at who he was as an artist and what his potentials were. He said that he believed his name Prophet sounded very generic.

“His name is Mark, middle name is Miles and last name Miller, I said does Justin Timberlake call himself you know Q-Tip. All these great singers, they go by their name, so we came up with Mark Miles and switched his last name to Milez,” he said.

Pardon said that the biggest thing that separated Mark Millez from all the other rappers was that he was perceived realistic to his fans and not just to be another artist with the same one- word name.

“You got a Stray and A Hatch, all the local artists have this one-word kind of thing and their rappers, we wanted to kind of expand and create an away to do more than that. I think it kind of identified us and separated us from those guys. When people started hearing Mark Millez they knew more than just a rapper.” When speaking to hip hop artist, Javier “J. Reed” Reed, he said that he chose to stick to his first initial and last name because he wanted to be like anyone else, he said that he wanted his name to represent his music and to embody being who he truly was.

“You shouldn’t create an Identity that kind of determines who you are. If I know you as an artist and you really are a nice person and a family man, but just to be popular and sell your image, you’re talking about disrespecting women, then that’s what I’m talking about. You shouldn’t put so much emphasis on keeping up with your image, your image should be a representation of who you truly are and I think that people are more than capable of building a brand around a genuine image,” said J. Reed.

Sha’Tarra Johnson, a Wayne State University Public relation student and the fiancé of Reed, said that identity is the biggest thing when promoting an artist brand to their audience.

“Your demographics go hand and hand with who you are, how you try to get your music out there, and who are your consumer. A lot of times, me personally, if I don’t feel like you’re a genuine person, then I want no part. I’m not sold, on you because I don’t think your genuine and I think you doing for publicity and just the type of look at me attitude,” Johnson said.

She said that since J. Reed is so marketable, it’s easy for his audience to pick up his story because of his positive and genuine image. So she says she tries to get him to perform in schools, community events, and other events, where she knows that he will gain more fans. According to My Name: Naming and Identity in African American Literature and Hip Hop, conducted research by Kashian Antonio Scrivens, researcher of North Carolina A&T State University, she says she believes that “names, titles, and labels have become one of the many constants in human life. Regardless of what is being named, whether living or not, that person, place or thing has a name and is addressed as such—no matter the language used to label it, ‘naming is the visible side of the threat of non-recognition, which is the invisible side of naming. To name is to ‘accredit objectivity, self-identity positivity, plenitude.’”

When interviewing rapper Santana “Santana Da Vinci” Troutman of Forever Golden said that when an artist distinguishes their selves, they take the time to think about who they are, how they affected and the daily thing that goes through their life, which may help select and create name and identity.

“Sometimes people call me “Sleep God” or “Realm God” and, truth be told, I sleep all the time, I find that to be the best therapy…. There’s always stories behind the names, it never just “aw man, I came up with this on the blue,” no, everybody has a story that leads back to it. You find it interesting, all these interviews that we do it gives us a form of explaining ourselves to where we can’t really explain it through our music, we can actually sit down and give you our inner thought of what’s going on or what came to be,” said Troutman.

Links:

20 Stories Behind Rappers' Stage Names: Waka Flocka, Jay-Z & Morehttp://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/the-juice/1555884/20-stories-behind-rappers-stage-names-waka-flocka-jay-z-more

Kendrick Lamar Talks Name Change, Growing Up in Comptonhttp://hiphopdx.com/news/id.15501/title.kendrick-lamar-talks-name-change-growing-up-in-compton

Meet OSHUN, the Nubian Mafia With a Message of Peace http://www.complex.com/music/2015/04/oshun-interview-mixtape-premiere

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65xoG2Dz3VI]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39WHwYx9K40]

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Play my game:http://philome.la/nicsvisualblog/whats-your-rapper-name

Link:https://nicolettevisualblog.wordpress.com/2017/04/26/how-surnames-represents-identity-and-originality/