10 Notable Instances Of The 'My Name Is X And I'm Here To Say' Rap Gimmick

Before Kanye, before Jay-Z, before Notorious B.I.G., before NWA, the only rap song I knew wasn’t even really a song – it was a line. “My name is X and I’m here to say/I’m the coolest guy in the U.S.A.” Naturally, I would substitute “X” with “Josh” and occasionally swap “coolest” with “swellest” or, if I wanted to feel hip, “illest,” but the overall structure remained the same. As a kid, I thought that line encapsulated everything there was to know about rap: it had bravado and it rhymed. DONE AND DONE.

I also assumed every rapper began every song with “My name is…” (this was well before Eminem literally titled a song “My Name Is,” likely as a winking acknowledgment toward dumb white guys like me who thought that was rap), when in fact, it’s actually difficult to find many non-parodies that use the line. What artist would want to admit that they used the structure that Barney Rubble once did in a Fruity Pebbles commercial?

Here are 10 notable uses of the “My name is X and I’m here to say” lyric (I’m not including close-ish instances, like, “My name is DMC, the all-time great/I bust the most rhymes in New York state” in Run DMC’s “Raising Hell” because that’s much more common), most of which are parodies, including its possible origin.

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“I’m the devil and I’m here to say/I’m the most evil rapper in the U.S.A.”

“Well my name is MC and I’m here to say/I rock the mic with asbestos all up in your face.”

“Well, I’m the Big Gipper and I’m here to say/That I’m the biggest rapper in the U.S.A.!/Yeah, my name’s Ron with the D.C. Crew/Going on record with a rap for you.”