Shaboozey Reveals How He Accidentally Got His Stage Name: “I Remember the Story Vividly”

Shaboozey’s stage name was borne out of an accidental mistake. While speaking to Cody Alan on SiriusXM’s The Highway Music Row Happy Hour: CMA Fest Edition, Shaboozey revealed the origins of his stage name, per Country Now.

Shaboozey said that, throughout his life, his Nigerian birth name, Collins Obinna Chibuez, was often mispronounced and misspelled.

“It could be a little confusing at times. Hearing your name [mispronounced] during attendance was always a thing,” he told Billboard in 2024. “You felt like you had to make it easier for everyone else to understand.”

That was never more true than when his high school football coach misspelled his name as “Shaboozey.”

“Playing football in high school as a freshman, you kind of come in and you’re kind of the guy that has to just prove themselves,” he said in a 102.7 KIIS-FM interview in 2024. “My coach had just seen my last name and he was like, ‘Shaboozey,’ and wrote it on a helmet exactly how it’s spelled as my artist name.”

Shaboozey’s Stage Name Has a Wild Origin Story

Instead of pushing back, Shaboozey decided to lean in to the new moniker.

“I have a strange name for anybody to pronounce,” he said during his most recent radio show appearance. “I think everyone just kind of read it and was just like, ‘Shaboozey.’”

Eventually, he thought to himself, “You know what? I’m not going to fight it.”

Shaboozey soon became the singer’s nickname.

“I just got called that throughout school, throughout my years in high school and Woodbridge and everyone around town knew me as that,” he told 102.7 KIIS-FM. “And I just thought it was cool to just play at my football coaches, like, ‘Look at me.”

When he decided to pursue music professionally, though, he didn’t immediately consider making it his official stage name.

“I just asked my friends, I was like, ‘Man, what do you guys think my stage name should be?’” he recalled to the SiriusXM station. “And I remember the story vividly. They’re like, ‘Man, Shaboozey. Just do that.’”

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Photo by Taylor Hill/FilmMagic