Lil Wayne once explained why he goes by Wayne instead of the Dwayne he was named for, and it comes down to the father he shares the name with. In a 2009 interview with Katie Couric, the rapper, born Dwayne Michael Carter Jr., said he’s a junior named for a living father who was never in his life.
“So I don’t want to be Dwayne,” he said. “I’d rather be Wayne.”
He has never softened what he thinks of his biological father. In GQ’s November 2011 issue he put it plainly, saying of the man who left when he was 2: “He don’t give a shit about me. And I don’t give a shit about him.”
Wayne was born in New Orleans’s Hollygrove in 1982, and his parents split when he was 2.
The GQ conversation came after he saw his father outside a New Orleans hotel at a recent show. According to him, when a staffer asked the man why he was there, the man said he was waiting for a woman to finish her shift.
Wayne has pointed elsewhere for the father figure he claims. He’s said his late stepfather, Reginald “Rabbit” McDonald, who backed his rap before he was murdered in 1997, was his real dad, and he keeps a tattoo for him. His daughter Reginae, born in 1998, is named after him.
