Your rap name is your brand. It's going to follow you throughout your entire career and a lot of people will get their first impression of you off of your name.
I'm noticing now that a lot of upcoming hip-hop artists have some crazy rap names, some are interesting, and some are just poorly made or poorly thought out. So, what I want to do is give you five tips for improving your rap name and making sure you start off with a good foundation
Align Your Rap Name With You
My first tip would be to start with something that aligns with who you are as a person. Don't go out and have your name as "Thug Boy" if you're rapping about party music, and don't go out and make your name "Street Maniac" when your raps are about intelligent stuff.Try to make sure your name aligns with who you are and what you talk about as an artist. It makes that "brand cohesiveness" connect better while making it fluent and smooth.
Search Your Rap Name
You want to make sure you search the internet for your rap name. A problem that artists have, especially ones with generic names like Lil Ron or even Young Thug - however, he probably doesn't have that problem now because of his popularity.Common names will cause you to have a lot of competition in search engines. So, If your rap name is Lil John and someone searches you on Google, they may find a movie someone made about Lil John, a book about someone else named Lil Jon, an author named Lil Jon, and more.
You don't want that. You don't want to have your name conflicting and coinciding with something that's bigger or more popular than you.
Have a Clean Rap Name
Don't include any words that are offensive, violent, or anything like that. You want your rap name to be broad enough where it gives you the potential to expand, but close enough that it really connects with your audience and it symbolizes you.You don't want "gun", "tity", "killer", "murder," or anything similar in your rap name. Words like that don't typically do well from a music business and music promotion, because what happens is that as you grow as an artist, you gain popularity and now all these companies want to sponsor you, but no company wants to sponsor or endorse an artist that has a name like that. That puts a bad rep on their name.
Check The Domain Name Availability
Make sure your name is available from a domain name standpoint. If your name is "Blue Face", make sure that blueface.com is available, and Blue Face is available for social media.If it's not, it's not like it's the end of the world. You just may have to add a prefix or suffix. For example, my social media handles are @ImDariusBurgan. Now, "DariusBurgan" was available on just about everything. It was one social network, and I can't remember which social network it was, but it was one social network that I think I signed up for a long time ago, and I don't have the email or password.
So, since I couldn't get it, I changed everything except my website to @ImDariusBurgan.
Avoid Riding Waves
Make sure your name is really thought out because it's so much hassle to try to rebrand yourself once you've already gained traction and popular.Think about what name you would be satisfied with if you were 50 or 60, and people are still calling you this name. Make sure you're comfortable with that name, and you're not using it as just a gimmick or you're trying to ride a wave or whatnot.
I remember when Chief Keef came out, and I started seeing all these "Chief" somethings, or they were adding "Keef" at the end – and it's like, why are you riding the Chief Keef wave?
You can do it. Artists blow up all the time riding a wave, but you're a little bit less authentic when you do that. Create your own thing, and make sure it's something you're comfortable with down the road.
So, those are 5 tips to help you improve or decide on your official rap name. If you have any questions, leave a comment below and I'll try to help you out as much as possible. Click the link for more information how to narrow down the perfect rap name. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYB5jRw3nL8
