The Many Alias of Mike

[hahninator]

When fans told Mike “You’re starting to challenge Puff Duffy/ Diddy/ P Diddy for most name changes by an artist”, he replied, “There's a long way to go before I max out on number of name changes. I think Wu Tang set the bar.”

So we decided to take a look at all of the projects Mike has been involved with. While not all of these are names Mike has actually gone by, these are works he has been a part of in some form or another.

Everyone knows the Xero -> Hybrid Theory -> Linkin Park evolution and fans know Fort Minor and the new Mike Shinoda project, but here are a few other names of projects he has worked on or in and/or names he has gone by:

Kenji

Mike actually went by the name Kenji for a brief period in the mid 1990s. Fans know this name of course as the title of one of the best Fort Minor songs, released on the album The Rising Tied. Kenji was the name of Mike’s late grandfather, who passed away in summer 2017, and is Mike’s middle name.

In a few Xero songs (“Closing” and “Drop”), Mike shouts out the names Kenji and Artofficial (who is Joe Hahn) as “representing Xero”.

Akira

“High Voltage” from the Hybrid Theory EP shouts out the name “Akira.” When questioned who the "Akira" in the lyrics was, Mike said, "akira is a name i used to go by for a short period. it's from the movie, and it's the long version of my brother's middle name, akio"

White Pegacorn / Mark Wakefield

Mike used to make joke songs with Mark Wakefield (Xero) on the weekends in high school and college, before Xero had formed. It was a just-for-fun project featuring spoof covers imitating Snoop Dogg and other big hip-hop records of that era. In 2008, they released a song together under the name White Pegacorn.

The only song released was entitled "Barack Your World" and first surfaced on September 4, 2008 on YouTube. It listed the members of the band as being Rick Pegacorn (Vocals), Ripper (Guitar, Vocals), Dante Danger (Bass), and Deathwish (Drums). Ken "Pooch" Van Druten, Linkin Park's FOH mixing engineer, posted the video on his blog with the following text:

"This video was made by LP band member Mike Shinoda and his friend Mark Wakefield. They used to make funny videos like this all the time in high school and decided to write this song recently. Enjoy."

Junkyard Scientific / Mike + Ryu

The name Junkyard Scientific is mentioned in the Xero songs “Fuse” (from the 4 track cassette tape) plus “Closing” and “Fiends” (released online in 2017). It refers to Mike rapping with Ryu, or with Styles Of Beyond… of which Ryu is a member. It was a name that Ryu’s friend came up with (prior to S.O.B.). It never formed into a proper crew but Ryu referenced it in songs occasionally as he liked the name, and Mike mentioned it in the three Xero tracks.

Ryu said he met Mike in the early-to-mid 90s when they lived right up the street from each other. Mike had a little production studio in his bedroom where they used to make demo tapes and parody songs. "The first thing I heard Mike write was a... the song was called "Whatever The Fuck." We just said, 'ok, we're just gonna write the first thing that pops in our head and just keep going back and forth and back and forth.' And actually, it's a pretty good song.”

Ryu later added, "I think the first song I ever recorded with Mike was a song called "Whatever The Fuck". We recorded it in his bedroom on a little 4 track recorder. Mike did the beat, and the concept was to say pretty much the 1st thing that popped into our heads when we wrote it. We did that like in 1996, back in our development stage of rapping."

This isn't, however, the only unreleased collaboration between the two. In an interview with HipHopDX, Ryu talked about how he first met Mike and how they used to make demos together:

"My man Chris 007, he ended up being Styles Of Beyond’s manager, I met him and he was best friends with Shinoda. I didn’t know anybody out there so he introduced me to Shinoda and Mike had all the equipment in his room so naturally we started rapping together 'cause I guess in the area I lived at there weren’t many rappers who knew what the hell they were doing and since I was from a neighborhood where you really had to rap good I guess people started to gravitate towards me because of that. So Mike had equipment in his room and we just started working, making demos and stuff like that and we just ended up being friends."

Pooch Pound

In Rolling Stone in 2013, Mike talked about how he took his first steps towards hip-hop music when he was about 13 years old.

He said, "I didn't know anything about old-school rock & roll or blues, but I'd hear a B.B. King song and just think it was the greatest thing ever. I always ended up taking those influences and making hip-hop beats out of them. So I put my bluesy piano to a sampled beat and, eventually, I started rapping over it."

And then described the type of music he was making: "For the most part, we made a lot of joke songs. Gangsta rap had just poked its head out, and we made a lot of joke gangsta-rap songs. They were all about smoking weed and being pimps, and those were two things we were totally unfamiliar with. Like with a lot of suburban kids, there was an element of voyeurism there -- I had never been down to Long Beach, y'know?"

In a 2015 Reddit AMA, Mike said, "I once made a demo tape of joke gangsta rap songs called “Pooch Pound” that included a song called “North Coast Killa” where we executed all our Canadian gangsta rivals."

Others + Collaborations:

Relative Degree

Mike was not in this band, but he (very, very briefly) worked with them in 1995-1996.

When Rob Bourdon and Brad Delson were in high school, they started a band called Relative Degree with Mark Wakefield and the bass player from a band called Karma. They had a dream of playing one show at The Roxy Theatre, a popular club for up and coming bands, located on Sunset Blvd. in West Hollywood, California, so they set it as their big goal. Relative Degree played the show at The Roxy Theatre on May 17, 1996 before disbanding.

At the time, Mike, who was a classmate of Brad's and Rob's, was making beats for local MCs, but would watch them practice sometimes. Mike developed a strong friendship with Brad, and, although he never joined the band, he would occasionally put samples in their songs, which had a sound similar to 311.

Mike and Joe Trapanese

Together, Mike and Joe Trapanese co-composed and re-scored the action film The Raid: Redemption, which is about a covert mission involving the extraction of a brutal crime lord from a rundown apartment.

Sony told Mike that they loved Fort Minor and Mike’s remixes so they asked him to score the film. Mike said, “I thought back about those and they were all stuff that was really enjoyable to make. They were really asking me to do stuff that I do naturally and that I do for fun. So, it seemed like a good opportunity to do that and get some more experience scoring.”

Additionally, he said, “Joe Trapanese stood out to me because he had already collaborated with Daft Punk on the Tron: Legacy soundtrack. It’s not a knock against the movie, but I thought the score was better than the movie. I thought Joe’s work was excellent and I really loved it, so when I talked to him and we hit it off and we saw eye to eye on a lot of it, I didn’t even think twice about committing to working together, if he was cool with it, which he was. We just got started right away.”

Mike and Lil Jon… kinda

Mike and Lil Jon wrote and produced the score for the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards. An EP was released on August 31, 2005 in support of the award function. The soundtrack was available for download on the website of MTV during 2005-2006, but the whole album was not available anywhere, so Mike released it separately for streaming on his official website on March 1, 2010.

Mike said, “I did a small selection of beats for the show, and scored it with Lil Jon, who contributed his own tracks. We did not collaborate on any, FYI”

The Mall (MS + CB + DF + JH + Alex Puro)

Most Linkin Park fans know Joe Hahn’s film The Mall, which featured a score and soundtrack by Chester, Phoenix, Joe, Mike, and Alec Puro. The full songs were Linkin Park demos and the rest of the score was written around the movie, with some of the pieces sampling the full demos. There was no “band name” for this crew as it consisted of over half of Linkin Park and the members were credited individually.

And there you have it! We didn’t even get into one/two song collaborations he has done...

[Geki]

Seems like Mike and Chester did more outside of LP than actually with LP. Haha.

[GeekShadow]

What about Spike Minoda ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n14QePs9knY

 

[Geki]

You guys also forgot ‘’M. Shinoda The Cobra Holder’’.

[hahninator]

Was just going by songs he's credited for/songs released under that name.