Rappers' Real Names: 45 Government Names Behind the Stage Names

Gucci Mane is Radric Delantic Davis. Childish Gambino is Donald McKinley Glover Jr., named by a Wu-Tang name generator. Ice Cube is O'Shea Jackson, named by a brother who threatened to freeze him. Here are 45 rappers' real names and how each stage name actually happened.

The gap between the license and the stage

A rock band picks a name for a poster. A rapper picks a name they will say out loud, in the first person, several hundred times a year, as a claim about who they are. Higher bar. "Radric" is a fine name. It is not a name you can shout over an 808.

Rap also grew out of DJ and graffiti culture, where the tag came first and the career came later, if at all. Nobody was building a brand. They were building a signature, and plenty of these artists got stuck with whatever a cousin invented in a kitchen.

Every other list like this leaves out the how, which is where the comedy lives. For the wider taxonomy, see the mechanics of rap nicknames. Below: government names, and the documented story behind all 45.

The ones hiding in plain sight

Some rappers reinvented nothing. They found the good four letters in the name their parents gave them and threw the rest away.

Drake — Aubrey Drake Graham

Drake is his legal middle name. That is the whole trick. The most-streamed rapper of his generation built a global brand by picking the second of his three names, roughly the effort involved in choosing a font. He compensated later by collecting more nicknames than anyone alive, a subject we treat with the seriousness it deserves.

Kendrick Lamar — Kendrick Lamar Duckworth

He performs under his first and middle names and leaves Duckworth at home. His father named him after Eddie Kendricks of the Temptations, a lovely piece of intent. Before settling on his own name he rapped as K.Dot, then retired it because he disliked how the alias pulled attention away from who he actually was.

Nas — Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones

Nas is short for Nasir. The unusual part is the middle: bin Olu Dara means son of Olu Dara, the jazz and blues musician from Mississippi who is in fact his father. Most rappers had to invent a lineage. Nas was issued one at birth and had it printed on the paperwork.

Lil Wayne — Dwayne Michael Carter Jr.

He removed one letter from his own name and told everyone why. He is a junior, and he told Katie Couric in 2009 that his father was alive but had never been in his life, so he did not want to be Dwayne. Losing the D is the most efficient statement ever made in rap. He has since accumulated a full wardrobe of other nicknames.

Quavo — Quavious Keyate Marshall

Quavo is the front half of Quavious. There is no origin story to chase because there is no distance to cover. Worth noting that Quavious Keyate Marshall is a genuinely great name that would have worked unedited, but you cannot chant four syllables in a hook, and he knew it.

Baby Keem — Hykeem Jamaal Carter Jr.

Keem falls out of the back of Hykeem. He is Kendrick Lamar's cousin, meaning one family produced two of the most decorated rappers alive, and both built their stage names by trimming the name they were given. Somewhere there is a Carter family reunion where nobody uses their full name.

Wale — Olubowale Victor Akintimehin

Wale, pronounced WAH-lay, is the standard Yoruba shortening of Olubowale. His parents came from the Yoruba region of southwestern Nigeria, so what reads as a stage name to an American audience is simply what his family has always called him. The rest of the world arrived late and assumed it was branding.

Little Simz — Simbiatu Abisola Abiola Ajikawo

Simz comes out of Simbiatu. She was born in Islington to Nigerian parents and is ethnically Yoruba, and her full name has more music in it than most albums do. Her stage name is the compressed radio edit. It is the only thing about her career that has ever been small.

Lil Durk — Durk Banks

Durk is his actual first name. The only invented part is the Lil, which he added the way you would add salt. Published versions of his middle name vary, so we are leaving it alone. For the longer history of that three-letter prefix, we traced why so many rappers put Lil in front of their names.

Akon — Aliaune Damala Bouga Time Puru Nacka Lu Lu Lu Badara Akon Thiam

His stage name is not an abbreviation or an invention. It is a word already standing in the queue, second from the end. Renderings of the full name vary slightly across published sources, which is what happens when a name has twelve parts, but Akon is in there every time, waiting to be noticed.

LL Cool J — James Todd Smith

LL Cool J stands for Ladies Love Cool James, which everybody knows, and yet almost nobody connects it to the fact that his name is James. The acronym was coined by his friend and fellow rapper Mikey D. It is a compliment somebody paid him once that he turned into a forty-year career.

The complete reinventions

These names have no relationship to the birth certificate. They came from films, drum machines, comic books, football rosters, and twice from a website.

Gucci Mane — Radric Delantic Davis

The best real name in rap belongs to the man least likely to use it. He did not pull the stage name off a shopping bag. It came from a nickname given to his father, the Gucci Man, which he inherited and modified. The luxury association is family coincidence rather than marketing, which improves it.

Ghostface Killah — Dennis Coles

The name comes from a character in the 1979 kung fu film The Mystery of Chess Boxing, part of the martial-arts canon Wu-Tang mined for basically everything. Dennis Coles is the name of a man who fixes your transmission and does it right. Ghostface Killah is not. That is precisely the point.

RZA — Robert Fitzgerald Diggs

RZA is a backronym for Ruler, Zig-Zag-Zig, Allah, which in the Supreme Alphabet resolves to Ruler, Knowledge-Wisdom-Understanding, Allah. It grew out of a fan nickname and his graffiti tag, Razor. Robert Fitzgerald Diggs sounds like a man who chairs a committee and runs a tight meeting. He became three consonants and an entire cosmology instead.

MF DOOM — Daniel Dumile

Doom began as a childhood nickname, a phonetic play on Dumile that friends used long before the mask existed. He later fused it with Marvel supervillain Doctor Doom, turning a family joke into the most committed act of world-building in the genre. The name was always his. The armor came later.

Childish Gambino — Donald McKinley Glover Jr.

He put his name into an online Wu-Tang Clan name generator and used what came out. He has said that if he had known it was going to be something for real, he would not have used it. A Grammy-winning discography exists under a name assigned by a novelty website in about four seconds.

Post Malone — Austin Richard Post

Post is his actual surname. Malone came from a rap name generator, which he has confirmed, putting to rest the widespread theory that he was honoring the basketball player Karl Malone. Two of the biggest names of the last decade were generated by web forms. The machines have been quietly running A&R for years.

DMX — Earl Simmons

He took the name from the Oberheim DMX drum machine, then went back and retrofitted meaning onto it, first as Divine Master of the Unknown and later Darkman X. Naming yourself after studio equipment and reverse-engineering a mythology out of it is one of the great pieces of improvisation in rap.

Big Daddy Kane — Antonio Hardy

Kane is a variation on Caine from the television series Kung Fu, and Big Daddy comes from a Vincent Price character in the 1963 film Beach Party. The famous backronym, King Asiatic Nobody's Equal, was applied afterward. He assembled a legendary rap name out of a martial-arts drama and a surf movie.

Coolio — Artis Leon Ivey Jr.

Friends started calling him Coolio Iglesias, a riff on the singer Julio Iglesias, and the name got shortened over time. So the man behind one of the most recognizable rap records ever made was named, indirectly, after a Spanish crooner. Artis Leon Ivey Jr. is a name with real dignity. Coolio outperformed it commercially.

Ice-T — Tracy Lauren Marrow

He read the novels of Iceberg Slim as a teenager, memorized passages, and recited them to friends, who kept asking him to kick some more of that by Ice. The nickname stuck, and he adopted Ice-T as a tribute. It is the rare stage name that began life as a book report.

T-Pain — Faheem Rashad Najm

T-Pain is short for Tallahassee Pain, named for the hardships he went through living there. So the most relentlessly upbeat and most-imitated voice in 2000s pop has spent two decades walking around under a stage name that translates, roughly, to Difficult Time in Florida's Capital. Nobody has ever sounded happier while announcing their own suffering.

Busta Rhymes — Trevor George Smith Jr.

Chuck D of Public Enemy named him after George "Buster" Rhymes, a wide receiver who played in the NFL and CFL. That is the entire origin. One of the most distinctive voices in rap history is named after a football player, by another rapper, and is now considerably more famous than the athlete who supplied it.

The ones whose real name is better

A short section for the artists who traded down. The government name is the cooler one every time, and every time there was a reason.

Logic — Sir Robert Bryson Hall II

His legal first name is Sir. Not a title, not an affectation. It is on the documents, courtesy of his mother, which means every customer service representative he has ever spoken to has been obliged to address him as Sir Robert. He set that aside for Logic, arrived at by shortening his earlier alias, Psychological.

JID — Destin Choice Route

Destin Choice Route is a name that sounds like a philosophical position, and it is close to unimprovable. He went by JID instead, which came from his grandmother's nickname for him, based on how jittery he was as a kid. Grandmothers are undefeated in this field and we will see them again shortly.

Travis Scott — Jacques Bermon Webster II

Jacques Bermon Webster II sounds like a man who owns vineyards. The stage name is a two-part tribute: Travis for a favorite uncle, and Scott for Kid Cudi, born Scott Mescudi, one of his biggest influences. He surrendered an aristocratic name in order to walk around permanently wearing his hero's first name.

Lil Nas X — Montero Lamar Hill

He was named after the Mitsubishi Montero, which his mother drove. He later titled both an album and a chart-topping single Montero, meaning one of the defining songs of 2021 was, at several removes, named after a mid-size sport utility vehicle. The Nas in his stage name is a tribute to Nas.

Cardi B — Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar

Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar is a magnificent name, and Cardi B is a contraction of Bacardi, which had been her nickname long before it was ever a stage name. Her younger sister's given name is Hennessy. Two sisters, two spirits, and one of the great accidental branding exercises in the history of American entertainment.

Doja Cat — Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini

Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini is a beautiful and serious name. Doja Cat is one she assembled as a teenager in 2012 out of internet slang and one of her actual cats. She has since said the image it created was never really her. A reminder that at seventeen you should not name anything you intend to keep.

The family names

The most common source of a rap name is not a marketing meeting. It is a relative who said something once and never let it go.

Ice Cube — O'Shea Jackson

His older brother Clyde threatened to put him in the freezer until he turned into an ice cube. That is the origin of one of the most feared names in American music. A sibling insult, delivered in a kitchen, that went on to sell tens of millions of records and launch a film franchise.

Snoop Dogg — Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr.

His mother nicknamed him Snoopy as a boy because of his love for, and resemblance to, the Peanuts character. He shortened it and hardened the spelling, but the fundamental fact stands: a defining figure in West Coast rap is named after a beagle who sleeps on a doghouse. His mother was right, though. Look at him.

T.I. — Clifford Joseph Harris Jr.

His family called him Tip after his paternal great-grandfather. When he signed to Arista's LaFace imprint in 1999 there was already a famous Tip on the label, so he deferred to Q-Tip, saying that out of respect for the legendary career preceding him, he conceded. His manager suggested T.I. The politest name change in rap history.

Wiz Khalifa — Cameron Jibril Thomaz

Khalifa is Arabic for successor and was given to him by his Muslim grandfather, who felt it described what the boy was doing. Wiz is short for wisdom, from being called young Wiz because he was good at everything he tried. Both halves are compliments from an elder, which is not the résumé most people assume.

Queen Latifah — Dana Elaine Owens

At eight years old she found Latifah in a book of Arabic names, where it means delicate and very kind, and picked it herself. The Queen came later. A child choosing her own name out of a reference book, then building a four-decade career in music, film, and television on it, is a genuinely great story.

The Game — Jayceon Terrell Taylor

His grandmother coined the name because she was a big fan of the 1997 film The Game. That is the entire derivation. A Compton rap institution is named after a David Fincher thriller for no reason other than that grandma enjoyed it. Grandmothers, as promised, remain the most influential A&R department in the genre.

Megan Thee Stallion — Megan Jovon Ruth Pete

Stallion was a nickname she picked up as a teenager, drawn from Southern slang for a tall, statuesque woman. She kept her real first name, added the descriptor, and inserted a deliberately archaic Thee in the middle. It is the only stage name on this list that includes a grammatical joke.

The ones you already knew but forgot

You have known these facts for years. You still cannot produce them on demand at a party, which is exactly why this section exists.

Jay-Z — Shawn Corey Carter

He was known as Jazzy around the neighborhood, and took the stage name in homage to his mentor Jaz-O. The popular story about the J and Z subway lines near his Brooklyn home is a good story, and not the documented one. Shawn Carter is a name so ordinary that building an empire on it required a hyphen.

Eminem — Marshall Bruce Mathers III

He started rapping at fourteen under the name M&M, a play on his initials, and it eventually got spelled out phonetically as Eminem. Which means the most technically feared rapper of his era is professionally known by a candy pun rendered phonetically in cursive. It has never once slowed him down.

Dr. Dre — Andre Romelle Young

He first called himself Dr. J after basketball's Julius Erving, then merged that alias with his own first name and began calling himself the Master of Mixology. His middle name comes from the Romells, his father's amateur R&B group. Reputable sources render the spelling as both Romelle and Romell, so treat the extra letter as optional.

The Notorious B.I.G. — Christopher George Latore Wallace

Biggie Smalls came from a character in the 1975 film Let's Do It Again, played by Calvin Lockhart. When he found the name was already taken, he switched to The Notorious B.I.G. and explained the acronym as Business Instead of Game. Christopher George Latore Wallace is, for the record, a beautiful and enormous name.

Tupac Shakur — born Lesane Parish Crooks

He was born Lesane Parish Crooks and renamed at age one. His mother, Afeni Shakur, chose Tupac Amaru after Túpac Amaru II, a descendant of the last Inca ruler, executed in Peru in 1781 for revolting against Spanish rule. She wanted him to know he was part of a world culture, not just a neighborhood.

The ones who made it official

Most rappers keep the government name in a drawer. These four changed the paperwork, or had it changed for them.

Q-Tip — Kamaal Ibn John Fareed

He was born Jonathan William Davis and legally became Kamaal Ibn John Fareed after converting to Islam in the mid-1990s. So the stage name Q-Tip has now outlived two of his legal names, which is a strange and slightly undignified fate for a phrase most people otherwise associate primarily with ear care.

Yasiin Bey — Dante Terrell Smith

He legally changed his name in September 2011 and retired Mos Def entirely, explaining that he had begun to fear the name was being treated as a product rather than a person. Yasiin appears in the Qur'an's 36th surah. Very few artists walk away from a valuable brand on principle. He did it in one press cycle.

Common — Lonnie Rashid Lynn

He recorded as Common Sense until a reggae band from Orange County with the same name sued him, and he shortened it. An Academy Award, a Grammy sweep, and a decades-long acting career all sit under a name that exists because of a trademark dispute with a band you have never heard.

2 Chainz — Tauheed Epps

He spent years in Playaz Circle under a childhood household nickname, which he retired in 2011 in favor of something he described as more family-friendly. It worked. He has been a beloved figure ever since, and the new name carries the considerable added benefit of being pronounceable on daytime television.

FAQ

What rapper has the funniest real name?

It depends whether you find comedy in size or in contrast. Akon's full name runs twelve words long with the word Akon buried near the end of it. Logic's legal first name is Sir. But the biggest laugh is usually the gap: Gucci Mane, a man whose entire brand is excess, is legally Radric Delantic Davis.

What is Gucci Mane's real name?

Gucci Mane's legal name is Radric Delantic Davis. The stage name was not invented for the rap career at all. It was his father's nickname, the Gucci Man, which he inherited and adjusted. He has been public about the derivation for years, which makes it one of the few rap names with a clean paper trail.

Do rappers legally change their names?

Some do. Q-Tip was born Jonathan William Davis and legally became Kamaal Ibn John Fareed after converting to Islam. Yasiin Bey legally changed his name from Dante Terrell Smith in 2011 and retired Mos Def entirely. Most rappers do not bother, because a stage name works fine without a court's blessing.

What does government name mean in rap?

Government name means legal name, the one on the driver's license and the tax forms. It carries a small edge of confrontation, because asking for someone's government name means you are declining to accept the persona. When a rapper says government name, they are usually about to say something serious.

Why do rappers change their names at all?

Three reasons, mostly. A stage name is a trademark you can own, which a common legal name rarely is. It marks a break between the person and the performance, which is useful when the performance is aggressive. And it is a legacy of the DJ and graffiti eras, where tags came before anyone thought about record deals.