This article originally appeared on VICE News.It’s been almost two years since a 16-year-old Chinese Indonesian kid named Rich Chigga dropped “Dat Stick,” one of the most unexpected rap hits in recent memory.And now, Rich Chigga has publicly requested that people stop calling him by the name that made him famous. He will now go only by his real name: Brian.Depending on how you look at the world, your reaction to 2015’s “Dat Stick” may have taken you through the following roller coaster of emotions:
Advertisement
- Who the hell is this weird Asian kid?
- Whoa, this is pretty good.
- Hm, this “Rich Chigga” name seems kinda offensive.
- Wait, did this guy just say the n-word?
- …Fuck this guy.
Advertisement
Within a few months of the song, Brian had started apologizing for using the word. By his first public performance of “Dat Stick” in September 2016, he mumbled the lyric so it wasn’t really audible. In a May 2017 interview with Genius, he censored his own lyrics when he read them aloud. When an interviewer asked him why, he explained:
While the inappropriateness of the racial slur was pretty cut-and-dried, his name was a more complex question. The portmanteau of “Chinese” and “nigga” didn’t sit well with some people, but they seemed to be a minority - to which Brian himself belonged. Brian said in numerous interviews that he regretted using the name, but clearly most of his fans didn’t really mind the moniker – at least, not enough to stop listening to him. The name didn’t stop him from getting features from black rappers, or from selling out tour dates.But on Monday, Brian made a surprise New Year’s announcement, that he was abandoning the “Rich Chigga” name.“I have been planning to do this forever and I’m so happy to finally do it,” he tweeted. “I was naive & I made a mistake.”I was basically trying to make people less sensitive to the word [“nigga”] and making the word… taking the power out of the word. But then I realized like, I’m totally not in a position to do that. I was like, ‘I fucked up.’
He paired this announcement with a new single, “See Me”:His label may have had something to do with his decision. In June, I interviewed his manager, Sean Miyashiro. At one point, Sean started talking about a new song that “Rich Chigga” was working on, then caught himself mid-sentence, saying, matter-of-factly, “I think we’re going to have to change his name, though.”
Advertisement
The name change could be totally Brian’s decision, or it could be 88 Rising’s influence — or a combination of the two. It doesn’t really matter, though, because it’s Brian’s career that is on the line here.“Rich Chigga” was steadily gaining more name recognition – each single he’s put out has gotten millions of streams on YouTube alone, he’s been all over and an entire US concert tour with his name as a headliner has already sold out. Even as I write this, I keep having to remind myself to stop calling him “Rich Chigga” – and I’ve talked to him in person before (he introduced himself as “Brian”). By changing his persona right now, only a month before his first album drops, he is almost certainly hurting album sales.Politically (artistically?), Brian has made the right decision. Financially, it’s hard to say. He built his initial fame on his shock value, and now he’s stepping away from the thing that made him most recognizable.And now that he’s taken the training wheels off, he’s got a much harder task than proving that he’s not a cultural appropriator or a racist – he’s going to have to prove that he’s not a gimmick.So, rest in peace, Rich Chigga.And, good luck, Brian.RELATED: Chengdu's hottest rappers want to make it in the US