IF THE NAME FITS

In 1987 the only other "Hit Man" I knew of in Hip-Hop was Hit Man Howie Tee, who was a dope D.J. and Producer (who came to prominence during the "Roxanne" craze of the mid-80s). Since I knew that he spelled his name the usual way, I chose to add another T to mine. I loved the way it looked on paper too with an extra T and all. Then, I thought it needed another name to go along with the HITTMAN part of it. I ended up calling myself HITTMAN Delancey for a spell. I got the name Delancey from a Dana Dane song called "Delancey St.". It just had a nice ring to it at the time. But after about a month of calling myself "HITTMAN Delancey" I chose to drop the Delancey part and just go by HITTMAN.

During this time in Hip-Hop, most of my favorite artists' names had a little more to them than what you would first see or hear. For example, LL Cool J translates to "Ladies Love Cool James". KRS-ONE means "Knowledge Reign Supreme Over Nearly Everyone". The KANE part of Big Daddy`s name means "King Asiatic Nobody Equal". The RA in Rakim`s name means "Rakim Allah", and if you switch it around it still comes out AR (or R). Not to mention all the group names that too were acronyms, UTFO (UnTouchable Force Organization), BDP (Boogie Down Productions), EPMD (Erick n Parrish Makin` Dollars), NWA (Niggaz Wit Attitudes), CMW (Compton's Most Wanted), etc. Couple that with the fact that several cartoons I watched in this era had themes or titles with double meanings as well. The TRANSFORMERS slogan was "More Than Meets The Eye" because they were robots who doubled as vehicles, electronics, firearms, etc. The same with ROBOTECH and another cartoon called M.A.S.K. which stood for Mobile Armored Strike Kommand, and their rivals were a group called V.E.N.O.M.(Vicious Evil Network Of Mayhem). Also, important to note the slogan for M.A.S.K. was "Illusion Is The Ultimate Weapon". Needless to say, the subliminal undertones of the mid to late 80s` had a direct effect on me as I attempted to define myself as an artist. 

My next task was to come up with a meaning for my name. Eventually, I came up with "Hyped Invincible Tongue Talents Makin` All Nervous". At the time "Hype (or Hyped)" was the newest slang used to describe something. Some of its predecessors being words like "Fresh, Def, Dope, Ill, Stupid," so on and so forth. I chose the I in HITTMAN to stand for invincible because that`s how I felt at the age of 13. Though the shady late 80s` were dangerous and unpredictable, I truly felt immune to it all. But by the time I was 19, there had been so many that fell victim to the streets in my general peer group, and plenty near misses within my close circle of friends I didn`t feel as invincible as before. With respect to that fact, I changed the I to mean Intensive instead. The two Ts` in HITTMAN stood and still stands for "Tongue Talents", which is my way of saying I have the gift of gab. When I finally got around to what the MAN part of my name would mean, it just seemed to fall in place. Making All Nervous, how poetic? Now that my name had meaning, it was time to work extra hard on making my name ring true. It would take 11 years from the time I deemed myself H.I.T.T.M.A.N. to see what it was hittin` for on a professional level. During that journey, I can honestly say that my skills inspired many to go for theirs while totally discouraging others' pursuit of microphone mastery after crossing paths with me. Over time several meanings for my name materialized like "His Interesting Talents To Motivate Any Nigga/ All Nations", Homie I`m Taking The Money Attained Negatively", "Ho`s I Take To Motels And Nail", and "Haunting Insidious Trigger Terms Murk Adversaries Nefariously" to name a few...