A lot of people have been asking me how my stage name came about. So I’ll tell you all the history of it, so if anyone asks me or asks you, forward this article to the person and let them thank us later.
My name is Faith Mmata-Vincent Ifakachukwu Chidera Idara
Faith is my first name
Mmata is my surname
Vincent is my dad’s name, hence the compound surname
Ifakachukwu means “Nobody is bigger than God”. (Igbo)
Chidera means “what God has written cannot be changed”. (Igbo)
Idara means “Joy” (Efik)
There, you have it. So how did I go from these to Phire D
I came across music in its rawest form in my first SS2. Yup, I did SS2 twice because I had to move to a boarding school and I couldn’t enter in SS3. Also, my parents thought I was being distracted by friends and football in my previous school. Now talk about jumping from frying pan to Phire. Oh sorry, fire.
Anyways, my earliest experience with music was gospel music. Don Moen, Frank Edwards, Cece Winans, Donnie Mclurkin, etc. Then I moved on to gospel rap, Trip Lee, Lecrae and the like, you know how it goes. I’m guessing you don’t so I’ll move on.
So I got to Woji Town Word Of Faith Group Of Schools, first term and I felt like a fish out of water. I’m naturally an introvert, contrary to popular opinion. So I felt so alone and unsociable. But the one thing that always brought me out of my shell succeeded in doing so. Music.
One night, this guy was going around the hostel rapping and juniors were following him and clapping and singing along. And I was like, “Hmm, this is pretty cool, huh?” So I joined them, spit some raps that weren’t mine (sorry Tedashii). But none of them listened to gospel raps so they couldn’t catch me (check out my article titled THE GREAT IMPOSTOR to see how this affected me later on in my career).
So, I became a musician on campus.
From my name Faith, guys started calling me Faitho (you know that thing where guys just add -o- to the end of your name and make it your guy name, yup). And, then they stylized it with an -r- instead of a -th- (welcome to English 101). And then I stylized it with a -ph- instead of an -f-. Guess I do that a lot. Anyway, I became PHERO.
After I was done with high school (a great time in my life actually) I was finally exposed to the outside world. Full of hopes and dreams but zero knowledge, I finally settled on doing some research. So I watched a video about HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR RAP NAME (I’ll leave a link to it below), and the guy was talking about searching for your stage name to see if it’s taken. So, hands quivering, I did.
Guess what, it was. Full-blown musician, albums and all. I was never going to catch up in time.
So, I went online to check a RAP NAME GENERATOR, which was one of the options in the aforementioned video. And I got one I liked. CLEAN TONE.
Well, there was this uncertainty about it from day one. Many people in my life didn’t like it, like my sister. In fact, I showed my music to a guy, who heavily loved it, and then he asked for my music name, and I told him CLEAN TONE. He was like, “Nah, that’s not your name.” Of course, my girlfriend at the time was always supportive of anything I did, so I had that confidence.
But in my life, every mediocre thing must come to an end. I searched and I saw there was someone with the same name. A guitarist and producer. Albums out too.
So, I went back to my names. I couldn’t use Idara but I could cut it short to ID. So, ID it was.
But yeah, you guessed it. It was taken too.
So I sat down in Peter Hall
reception (CU students, I could show you the seat for a fee. History was made there). And I literally put two and two together.
So my name is Faith and my last name was ID
Faith + ID
So if we replace the -I- with -Fai- which both sound alike, we have Fai D
And then in my usual manner and since I’m from PH, I replaced the -F- with a -Ph-. Hence, Phai D.
Saying it now, it sounded like “fire”. So I was like, you know what? Phire D.
I sat down on that chair as Faith, but I left as Phire D.
And that my friends, was the beginning of the legend.
Before you leave, check out my previous article WHAT IS YOUR NAME on the importance of a name