Why I Named Myself Prince Kapone

By Prince Kapone | Weaponized Information

May 27, 2025

When I turned eighteen, I made a decision that would define the rest of my life. It wasn’t just about age—it was about self-determination. Me and my closest comrade, who named himself Moses Coleone, made a pact: we would rename ourselves. It was our rite of passage, a conscious break from the names given to us by empire and family expectation—names that tethered us to histories we didn’t choose and futures we refused to accept. We were claiming our own destinies, by force if necessary.

This wasn’t random. It was rooted in the philosophy of Dead Prez, the hip hop duo that introduced the concept of Revolutionary But Gangsta (RBG). They didn’t just rap—they taught. They understood that the people most crushed by this system—the colonized and the lumpen in the belly of the beast—held the greatest revolutionary potential. They drew from Malcolm X, who transformed from Detroit Red to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. They channeled Huey P. Newton, who built the Panthers with the “brothers on the block,” not ivory tower radicals. And more than anyone, they followed the legacy of Tupac Amaru Shakur, who lived and died at the crossroads of revolution and gangsterism.

Pac was the son of Afeni Shakur, a Panther. The stepson of Dr. Mutulu Shakur, a BLA and RNA warrior. Godson of Geronimo Ji-Jaga Pratt. And spiritual kin to Assata, Lumumba, and Saladin Shakur. Tupac was a walking contradiction: artist and outlaw, poet and revolutionary, panther and prisoner. But that contradiction is what made him dangerous to the system—and beloved by the people. He reached the most oppressed, and he spoke to their condition without flinching.

We studied that. We absorbed it. And then we named ourselves in its spirit. He became Moses Coleone. And I became Prince Kapone.

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Why Prince?

The name Prince has nothing to do with royalty. I didn’t choose it to elevate myself above others—I chose it to connect myself to three legacies that shaped my political consciousness.

First, it comes from Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince—a foundational text on statecraft, deception, and the mechanics of power. I came to study it deeply in my political maturation, not as a blueprint for tyranny, but as a cold-eyed analysis of how power functions in a world where justice is never neutral. Every revolutionary has to understand not just morality, but realpolitik. The enemies of liberation do.

Second, it’s an homage to Tupac, who renamed himself Makaveli before he died. That wasn’t a gimmick—it was a signal of his final transformation. Pac had absorbed the lessons of struggle, betrayal, and strategy. When I named myself Prince, it was to place myself in that same lineage. Pac once said, “I might not be the one who changes the world, but I guarantee I will spark the brain of the one who does.” I am both that spark—and the brain it ignited.

Third, it’s a nod to Antonio Gramsci and his work The Modern Prince, where he retheorizes the prince not as a king or ruler, but as a metaphor for the revolutionary vanguard. For Gramsci, the modern prince is the organized force of the working class—the party that welds theory with practice and seizes the historic moment. In that sense, when I call myself Prince, I’m not claiming dominion over anyone. I’m claiming my place in a tradition of strategic, disciplined, and revolutionary struggle.

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Why Kapone?

Now let’s talk about Kapone.

Yes—this name is an homage to Al Capone, the iconic gangster. But it’s not a celebration of crime for its own sake. It’s a recognition that in America, especially for those of us from the Italian tradition, Capone was the archetype of the outlaw. The system called him a criminal, but he was a product of capitalism’s own contradictions: poverty, exclusion, and bootlegged survival.

But I flipped it. I changed the C to a K.

Why?

Because I wanted to make the contradiction explicit. In this country, everything is coded in three Ks—Klan, Kapital, and Konquest. This is AmeriKKKa. And so I flipped Capone to Kapone to mark my rupture with the racist underbelly of this society. I wasn’t going to copy the gangster archetype handed to me by Hollywood—I was going to weaponize it.

Kapone represents the lumpen outlaw reborn as revolutionary. The bandit becomes the guerrilla. The hustler becomes the strategist. The contradiction is not erased—it is sharpened, politicized, and turned against the empire that created it.

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A Name Is a Weapon

So when you hear the name Prince Kapone, don’t mistake it for vanity or posturing. This isn’t cosplay or performance. It’s a name forged in the fire of study, struggle, and self-creation. It connects me to Machiavelli, to Tupac, to Gramsci—and to my fallen comrade, my best friend and brother, Mr. Moses Coleone. It unites theory and rebellion, art and war, discipline and contradiction.

This is who I am. And this is the legacy I carry forward.