C4, as in Seefor Yourself

So many names

Seefor Yourself: Have you spoken on it? I'm sure you're doing it yourself — the name changes, from Proeski to...

Carlos Aguilar: For sure. No, I haven't done that, but I'm definitely thinking about it. Everybody's had a name — what was your first rap name?

Seefor: Man, that's what I was thinking about when you hit me up. I've always gone through so many names. I was just trying to come up with something. So I started rapping. I was always breakdancing and B-boying. I think in seventh grade I started beatboxing for the homies, in eighth grade. And then in ninth grade, it was just my name for a minute. I was trying to come up with stuff. I remember — because I doodle and draw, I guess I wouldn't call myself a graf artist, but down that lane — I was writing Sticks, like STYX, because I was tall and skinny.

Carlos: Oh, so did you write it and not use it? At first you were just writing it?

Seefor: I wrote it, yeah. I was tagging it, trying it out. I used it for a few weeks, maybe. I was like, ah, yeah — I'm going to hit the weights. I don't plan on being skinny anymore. And then I came up with Spontaneous. Then we met the homie Spontaneous, and I was like, well, he already got that. Some people want to battle for names and stuff. I was like, nah, nah, this fool's down. I always wanted to come up with some originals — that was always my goal, to come up with my own styles of rhyming. You know how we were.

Battle for it, or let it go?

Carlos Aguilar: Oh, that's cool. Because one impulse, when you hear someone has a name you want, is to battle for it. But the other is to say, nah — okay, you have that, then I'm gonna go do something different.

Seefor Yourself: Absolutely. We have different personalities and characters and all of that. So that's how I was — oh, somebody came up with it first.

Looking for a name

Carlos Aguilar: What were you looking for in a name?

Seefor Yourself: You know, we're young, so we're figuring it out. I really didn't know at that time. I was going through the journey, then C4. I didn't want it to be the bomb — that's freaking cheeseball. But you know how we are with double entendres and wordplay. We had our crew, Traveling Circus — shout out to Relentless, who you just did, and Gabriel, and Chapstick, More Names, and Burger Time. And then me and Poseidon and Gabriel did a song, and Relentless.

Carlos: Hold on, hold on — you said you were rhyming without a name?

Seefor: Yeah, I didn't have one. We had a song called "Wonderful World of Words" we did on a compilation. And I said: "It's the minimal melanin master of ceremony slash mass communicator." I don't know if you remember that.

Carlos: I do remember that.

The four M's

Seefor Yourself: Minimal melanin master of mass communication. So it's four M's. So I was saying C4MC. Just from that bar, it's like C-M-M-M-M-C. And I kept playing with it. I know that's cheesy, but we were kind of cheesy. It's okay. And then I was like, where else do we go from that? We were so backpack underground at that time.

Carlos Aguilar: Well, so you wanted a name — because your crew, the names in your crew, you thought they were dope, and you wanted to have a name that was as dope as theirs, that type of shit?

Seefor: You always want a dope name. You want your bars to be dope, you want your songs to be dope, you want your clothes to be dope. Everything, of course. It's fresh. It's hip-hop. It's got to be fresh.

C4, Seefor Yourself

Seefor Yourself: And I kept working through it, and then I was like, C4 — Seefor Yourself. I was like, that's tight. But I always shortened it. So it was S-E-E-F-O-R, just C4, like that. Short — just like first name, last name. So I would just say C4. That's why everybody says C4. And then I got to that point, I was like, all right, I like that. Because now it has meaning with Seefor Yourself, which is, you know, actions speak louder than words. You probably get this all the time — people who aren't of the hip-hop culture be like, oh, you rhyme? Are you any good? What are you like? Blah, blah, blah. Seefor Yourself, you know what I mean? I can show you better than I can tell you. And I was like, I like this. You know, actions speak louder than words. I can show you better than I can tell you. I like that. I like the way that feels. I like the explanation of it. And that was kind of my journey of how I got Seefor.

Carlos Aguilar: This is interesting, with the first and last name. You have a rap first name and a rap last name, in some ways?

Seefor: Yeah, yeah, yeah. C4 is the first name, Yourself's the last name. So I spell it like that. C4, one word, S-E-E-F-O-R. It gets me in trouble with some people who don't know us: they call me C, because they say "C for Yourself," and then they call me Seefor. I was like, there's nothing cool about Seefor, right? C4, or C for Yourself.

Carlos: Have you changed the way you've spelled it, changed the way you've said it, anything? Or has it just been as it was?

Seefor: That rhyme I was telling you — the C, the four M's — and just working through it. We're out at open mics, you and myself, going through all this. That was our time. We're 18, 19, 20. So it was evolving. I knew I liked something there, but it took me a while to figure it out.

Names we're given

Carlos Aguilar: That's cool, because we get our names — we're given our government names, and they're kind of just pinned to us. They're fixed. But our rap names, it's a work in progress. It didn't fall from heaven. No one pinned it on you. This is you. You were negotiating. You knew what you wanted it to be. You knew what you didn't want it to be.

Seefor Yourself: Right. We know — well, we don't know. We figure it out as we grow older: who we are, what we're about, what's important to us, the foundation that we stand on. You kind of figure out and evolve. So we're still learning and evolving. Even that name — that's what excited me about it. I knew it could evolve. I could get on that journey.

Not in the name

Carlos Aguilar: Any temptation? I did Bookworm Brown, and I kind of did whatever that was. But did you ever feel tempted? Because there were white rappers who try to integrate their white identity into their name, as a thing. Was that ever a consideration? Or were you like, that's wack, don't ever think that, I don't ever want to do anything like that? We talked about that. No,

Seefor Yourself: No. It would always irk me when people ask me that stuff because I didn't care. That's a whole slippery slope. I just want to rap. I talk to other people now. I understand, now that I've gotten older — we all have different journeys we've gone through in life, and what we've gone through kind of forms our perspective on things. So I can understand different people's perspectives. I'll have people ask me all the time. I remember being at Elements and a dude was like, yo, spit a rhyme for me. I was like, I'm cool. They're like, come on, dude, you're white, I'm white. I was like— What's that have to do with anything?

Named by the crew?

Carlos Aguilar: No, that's cool. We've been talking — both Dead Eye and Relentless were named by their crew. That's one tradition. And then there's: I came up with my own name. You came up with your own name. What do you think about those two traditions in hip-hop? What's the difference between being named and naming yourself? And did anybody ever try to give you a name?

Seefor Yourself: No, nobody ever tried to give me one. It was all just my circle of people always trying to come up with names. But I do think it's dope if you get a name — if somebody names you something — especially if it's something earned. Like, we hear the Busta Rhymes story, where Chuck D was like, oh, you remind me of this football player — we'll call him Busta Rhymes. And then they changed it to Busta Rhymes. So Chuck D gave Busta Rhymes his name. Like, that's fire. Both are dope. If somebody gives you something — your friends know you, your circle knows you — if they're able to contribute that, that's just some dope homies.

Carlos: Have you participated in naming somebody?

Seefor: Yeah, we throw out ideas. I remember throwing out ideas and stuff like that, you know — just as a circle, you have your creative peers. I can't recall ever giving someone a name that stuck, though.

What makes a dope name

Carlos Aguilar: What do you think makes a dope hip-hop name?

Seefor Yourself: Something that ties in and truly has meaning — something you can identify with.

Carlos: And what makes a wack name?

Seefor: A wack name... I'm trying to think of somebody with a wack name. The same rules that apply to the culture. They've kind of shifted over the years, you know, from when we came up. If you bit somebody's rhymes or style, it was going to be a problem. You'd probably get touched — like, throw hands. I probably can't say "get touched" in 2025. Yeah, it was a problem. And now we're jumping on a podcast or just somebody's screen, and it's like, oh, this is working, this artist is doing this, why don't you all do that? I was like, that's not hip-hop. That's their shit. It's not that person's style. Your style is not the style of our area for me to take and claim as ours. Unless you're like a crew, and it's your crew thing, and y'all come up with it, you know, and do that together. So it's biting. If you bite, or I feel like you're taking something from somebody else, that's what I'm getting at. Those rules, if you're doing that, that's wack. Rhyme style, that's wack with your creativity. It applies to anything in the arts. If you're stealing from somebody else, that's wack. So if you come up with something, you identify with it, and it's original, that's dope.

Usually it's Chris

Carlos Aguilar: When you introduce yourself to people, do you introduce yourself by your rap name or your government name? Does it depend? How does that work?

Seefor Yourself: Usually it's Chris. Usually it's my government name. My homies, like — do you call me C4 or do you call me Chris?

Carlos: Chris, yeah. But both, actually — it's two things. Talking about this with Ralph, I feel like if I'm calling you C4, then we're both agreeing to play in character as our alter egos, insofar as our rap names are alter egos. You know what I'm saying? For Relentless — he's a comic book head — it's like, I'm not Ralph, I'm Relentless. Do you feel that way too? Is there a difference between Chris and C4?

Seefor: Not extremely. It probably used to be, now that I'm getting older. It's because we were making, like, our outskirts music, and there was a lot of, you know, profanity and sexually explicit stuff, all that kind of stuff. But now that I'm 46, I'm about to be 47 years old, the music and the art that I create and I write are in line with my personal values. So now they're more the same, versus it used to be so different, because I would try to rebel with— You know, as a rapper, just say ridiculous things — shock value stuff — which wasn't necessarily who I was or wanted to be. I might have been at the time; I was young and immature. But yes, I feel like that line is starting to blur, more so.

What the name let him say

Carlos Aguilar: Do you think your name gives you permission, even still, to say shit that Chris doesn't—

Seefor Yourself: I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm responsible for other people, and I'm not the most important person in my life as when I was 20-something. Me, me, me, me, me. So now that I'm responsible for other people — no, the world's not going to know the difference. And if I say something that's embarrassing to my wife or my children, that's not cool. I mean, about blurring and starting to become one, just because I'm the base of my totem pole. I'm not the top, look-at-me guy anymore. I'm not the most important person in my life, so I have to come from...

Carlos: I'm curious: do you let everybody know your rap name, or is it the type of thing where only certain people need to know — hey, guess what, I'm gonna tell you this: I have a rap name, and this is what it is?

Seefor: I finally have an album that I really like, and music that I'm about to start releasing, so I'm intentionally trying to let people know that I'm an artist more. I'm starting to get active and do things again, so people are starting to notice. For promotion purposes, I am letting people know: Seefor Yourself, check me out, follow me on Instagram, here's my website — music is coming. Just because... marketing purposes. I don't care. I would rather more people know me as Chris. Strictly for marketing purposes.

C4 at home

Carlos Aguilar: Your attachment to your name has changed over the years then?

Seefor Yourself: Yeah. Even sometimes my son will call me C4, or my wife will refer to it — it just depends what we're talking about. If they're talking about some rap stuff, they'll say that.

Carlos: Oh, really? Are they referring to someone else in their mind, like, oh, that's C4?

Seefor: Nope, it's just what we're talking about. If I'm talking about the album — C4 dropping something, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I don't know — we bounce between. If we're talking about music, usually he'll do that. But my son's not going to call me Chris. He's going to call me Dad. Or if he's being funny, he'll just say C4, because then it's not disrespectful. So I guess that allows him to get away with that.

Carlos: And how about your other family members, like older family members? How do they react to you having a rap name?

Seefor: They've known me. I've been a little hip-hop kid since as far back as I can remember. We lived in Fort Rucker, Alabama. I was in kindergarten, and I got second place in the break dance contest, on my cardboard box. So it's just — I've always been the hip-hop dude, the hip-hop kid.

Carlos: When you and Burger are kicking it, what does Burger refer to you as? And what do you call each other — you and Burger?

Seefor: He calls me Chris, I call him Burger. I don't know. Everybody just calls Burger "Burger."

Carlos: So he wears that name — he wears his name in a different way than you wear your name, or something. What's going on there?

Seefor: I don't know. He just always... I don't know. I feel like that was his name even outside of hip-hop — like, just more of his nickname. And then it was tied together. And then C4 is me coming up, figuring out a rap name. So I don't know if he had to settle on Burger, if he got called Burger. Maybe that was applied to him by his friends, you know?

Carlos: Brian or Burger? No, no — I feel like he would call you C4 on some occasion. Like if you guys were on stage or something.

Seefor: He refers to me.

Carlos: Oh, okay. So like, If he's talking to me about you, we

Seefor: We call Poseidon "Poseidon." It's both — it's David and Poseidon. But I know multiple Davids. So I think we call him Poseidon because we know—

Carlos: Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, no, that's cool.

Favorite names from the era

Carlos Aguilar: What were some of your favorite rap names from that era?

Seefor Yourself: From our crew, are we talking about famous people, or?

Carlos: No, not famous — maybe underground, like the Inland Empire. I'm thinking, now, Nicholas Slick — wasn't that a pretty dope name?

Seefor: Nicholas Slick, Meticulous, was dope.

Carlos: Meticulous? It was Nicholas Slick.

Seefor: It was Nicholas Slick, Meticulous, and we called him Nicholas Slick for short. Oh, he had a long-ass Name? I think it was the first name, last name, yeah. Oh, shit. When's the last time you seen Nicholas Slick?

Carlos: I don't even know, bro.

Seefor: Dude, I ran into him. I don't know if you saw it, but I got hired by the Clippers a few years back. And then I saw him at a game, and I saw him at another game. And he is the pastor for the Clippers. Like the team pastor — like, if the guys need prayer. Chaplain, or whatever. Yeah, chaplain. Yeah, they need prayer. He's— You know, he prays with the players before the game. So that's dope. Chapstick the Abstract was always crazy. And here we go again with two names. We used to call him Chapstick. C4, Seefor Yourself—

Carlos: We're talking about him — I'd hear him referred to as Jelani almost just as much, because that was so dope, that could have been a rap name or whatever. He had such a good name.

Seefor: Yeah. Well, he goes by that now, Jelani Latif, which is his middle name, I believe.

Carlos: I want to talk to him too.

Seefor: You're dope. Like, your name's dope. Oh, okay, so like — Random comes to mind. Random — remember Random, of course. And even outside of our crew, that was a fire name. But these fools were dope.

Carlos: You're not gonna remember a dope name with a wack rapper. Like, you can't come up with, who had a dope name but was wack? No, you just—

Seefor: Forget that. That fool's dope, bro. So what's his name?

Carlos: Yeah, exactly. He's dope, so what's his name? That almost makes the name dope. But there are some dope fools with wack names. There are some terrible names.

Seefor: So, you have all the years of Foundation. I think you have the most memorable line that's stuck in my head from all our freestyle sessions. Damn — what do you think that bar was?

Carlos: It's crazy how that shit works.

Seefor: It's ingrained in my brain.

Carlos: Nah. And I love it, man. There's so many memories, so much fucking great shit. It's great to see you fucking doing it, bro. So fucking hyped, cheering for you. Glad to hear you have new stuff coming out. An album that we can support?