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Tuesday, October 30, 2007
The Artist Name Game
The question has remained unanswered: 'Why do music artists often change their name?' At some point in their career, certain artists feel a need to take on a new identity, create an alias or just show the world that they’ve grown up. This often creates chaos for fans and record companies alike.The issue for record labels is how record stores, on-line retailers and ringtone companies will cope with the changes. It affects their alphabetical placement in retail sections and on artist pages, as well as causing plenty of marketing nightmares. For fans, it just gets down-right confusing! lol!
There are those artists who have made complete identity changes. Ol’ Dirty Bastard from the Wu-Tang Clan surprised his fans when he changed his name to Big Baby Jesus. Prince baffled just about everyone when he changed his name to a symbol. Garth Brooks took on the persona of 'Chris Gaines'. And of course, Sean Combs switched it up many times, when he went from Puff Daddy to P. Diddy then to just “Diddy”.
Artists have also been known to take on aliases. There was Notorious B.I.G. aka 'Biggie Smalls', Jay-Z who goes by the nicknames of 'Hova', Jay Hova' and 'Young Hov' and more recently Down who currently has the hit ringtone 'Lean Like A Cholo' is also known as “Kilo”.
For many rappers that come into the spotlight at an early age, some wind-up dropping the “Lil” or the “Young” from their title. Lil Romeo became “Romeo” and Lil Bow Wow is now “Bow Wow”. Snoop Doggy Dogg of course, graduated himself to just “Snoop Dogg” or “Big Snoop Dogg” as he’s sometimes referred to.
Who’s going to be next? Will Young Jeezy switch to just “Jeezy”. Will Lil Wayne simply become “Wayne”? What about Lil Flip and Young Dro? We’ll follow this issue and report back to you!
posted by Steve Augello @ 10:25 AM 
