From Young Jeezy to MC Hammer, Rap Name Changes That Failed

Mike Bigga Killer Mike

A basic rule of name change is that if your original name was bad ass, and your new name isn’t, it’s not going to stick. So while I commend Killer Mike for trying to get away from the homicidal tendencies his name conveyed, there was just no way people were going to make the move over to Mike Bigga.

The best he ever managed was “Killer Mike (aka Mike Bigga, and I’m only including the ‘aka’ out of respect)”, so like Just Plain Jeezy Mike eventually decided fuck it, pretended like the whole Bigga thing never happened and went right back to Killer Mike.

Lesson learned - if you want to change your name don’t set the bar too high on your original name. It’s hard to top something as good as Killer Mike.

(That screengrab from a MTV story really says it all. They call him “Mike Bigga” in the headline and list his name as “Mike Bigga p.k.a. Killer Mike”, but as soon as they start actually writing about him in the Essential Info section they can’t help themselves and use Killer Mike right off the bat.)