Kickin off our 10 Questions series with an up and coming MC from San Francisco, the homie Frak. Dude just dropped his Bagels mixtape, which has garnered over 30,000 spins online and he’s now living in Spain for the next 6 months. He was killin it on the MC Olympics circuit this past summer, opened for Shad and Earth Wind and Fire?!!?! So we sat down to get to the bottom of this and wax about Bagels and tapas.
“Am I a lab rat?” he asked me as we were about to start the first of Everything Ecstatic’s 10 Questions pieces. “Nah…you’re more of a guinea pig.” Here we go:
EE: I bumped Bagels a bunch of times…30,000 spins? That’s awesome. Tell me about it.
Frak: Yeah…I wanted Bagels to be an experiment in style, to try on all the sounds and flavors in hip-hop and see where I fit. That’s why it’s a baker’s dozen, 13 tracks with a different vibe every time around…So throughout my little rap career, a lot my fans have been my friends…my social circle, but my goal with Bagels was to transcend that circle. Thats what I’ve been doing all summer. the internet game is its own thing, but this summer i tried to put myself out there…do as many opening shows as i can and do as many gigs. It worked. I made it to the final round of the MC Olympics in Philly, Bagels got featured on Lupe Fiasco’s blog, reddit was huge…I opened for Shad and Earth Wind and Fire.
EE: Earth Wind and Fire?!
Frak: Haha…yeah, my school had them there for the 50th anniversary party and the president of the college had heard my song “Date With A Feminist” that was getting passed around and she personally e-mailed me and asked me if I wanted to open for Earth, Wind and Fire…and I was like “Are you kidding me? Of course!”
EE: That’s incredible man…So staying with the theme of the record…Talk about the intro, “A Dozen Cosigns.” You got Percee P, Denizen Kane from Typical Cats, Shad, Watsky…All of them were featured on that shout-out to kick-off the album. Talk about how you got in touch with those peeps and then talk about your relationship with Watsky.
Frak: With all the MC olympics, traveling, competing I was meeting a bunch of awesome MC’s that are inspiring to me and I wanted to utilize them to get more people to listen. Shad was watching me as i opened for him and sat me down and said “keep doing this man. keep doing this shit and happy to do a co-sign.”
I met Percee P at Rock the Bells, he had just hopped off stage with J5…Kills the set then he’s just walking around the festival and handing out CD’s…and all these peeps were there to see Macklemore and shit and didn’t respect this dude’s legacy, didn’t recognize him so I was all “Percee fucking P! You just killed it out there man.” He comes up to me and says “You look like an MC man” and I was like…what gave it away, the blue eyes and jewish nose? So i spit 32 bars for him and asked him if he wanted to do a co-sign for my record.
EE: Hell yeah! Dude is a legend.
Frak: Word…and Denizen Kane works with Youth Speaks and he’s a mentor now out of the rap game for me. I knew him for years and didn’t even know he was in Typical Cats when I first met him.
Everything Ecstatic 