Tyler The Creator has opted to use his government name, Tyler Okonma, in many of his recent creative endeavors outside of music. In a post he made to remember the late Virgil Abloh, Tyler explained that Virgil inspired him to use his government name. “Few years back i started using more of my African last name OKONMA because of how regal Virgils felt,” he wrote. “Everything he did felt like he said ‘hey over here, coast is clear’ whenever i questioned things.” Now it seems we could be seeing more of Tyler’s real name in the future.
“My stage name was from, I made a MySpace page when I was 13,” Tyler said during an interview with Fast Company. “I had 3 of them, one was regular for friends, another one was for something else, and then the third one was just ideas, I would put drawings and photos I would take and I would upload beats on there.” He continued, “I started using that one more and random people from Kentucky would be, like, ‘Cool beats, bro!’ And so I just kept the Tyler, The Creator thing going and, you know, I’m 17 in high school, around LA, the name’s getting around, and I kind of just kept it as my stage name.”
He then admitted that the name doesn’t appeal to him as much nowadays. “It’s really dumb but it stuck with me so it just works,” he said. “But my full name, Tyler Okonma, in all caps just looks really cool. So you might see more of that, I don’t know, I’m getting older and I think when people get older they start to realize sh*t, you just start changing.”
You can watch his full interview with Fast Company above.