After a disastrous tour that included on-stage meltdowns and canceled shows, Alabama rapper Yelawolf has resurfaced with a new name.
The Southern musician posted a series of videos to a newly-created Instagram page, and in his first upload he revealed that he’ll now go by Michael Wayne Atha (or MWA), which is his given name.
In the caption to one video, he explains that he “hoaxed the ‘suicide’ of Yelawolf with my ‘blood art.'” He then goes on to explain that the name change was inspired by a number of occurrences in his life including the loss of a friend and losing everything after he was placed in a psych ward by his former manager.
“… they couldn’t handle my vision .. I hoaxed the “suicide” of Yelawolf with my ” blood art ” along side a manic depressive state of mind from years of alcoholism .. after loosing my BiggieSmallz @shawtyfatt I decided to sober up and rebrand my new music as Michael Wayne Atha MWA (my given name from my beautiful mother Sheila Diane the original gangster .. named after Michael Landon and John Wayne) and shook the fuckin game .. so much so that my own X manager and wanna be father had me apprehended and thrown in the psych ward in SD .. where they tried to break me and feed me drugs for 72 hours against my will .. I lost everything,” MWA wrote.
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MWA also revealed that he’s nearly one year sober, and shared his plans to become “HipHop’s answer to rock and roll.”
A handful of other videos have been uploaded to his Instagram account between yesterday (December 21) and today (December 22). The rapper can be seen in the hospital in one and in another he sings “Bang, bang. I shot them down. Bang, bang. They hit the ground. Bang, bang. MWA’s back in town.”
