With Sway's Blessing, SF Rapper Frak Is Ready to Level Up

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n January, Frak got the break he’d spent years training for: rapping for hip-hop kingmaker Sway Calloway on his SiriusXM show, Sway in the Morning, live in New York City.

To turn up the heat, Sway and co-host Heather B. brought out the Fugees’ Wyclef Jean and Santa Rosa’s Ray Luv, who once rhymed with Tupac. The legends at the table gave Frak an improbable list of words to incorporate into a freestyle. And somehow, on the spot, Frak fit “pterodactyl,” “ubiquitous,” “proton” and “University of Michigan” into a cohesive verse that had Sway wide-eyed with disbelief and yelling “come on!” with hearty approval.

“He got that DNA in him, he’s not playing with you,” said Wyclef.

“Frak, congratulations, bro, this is a dream come true for you, man, and you rocked that shit — it didn’t turn into a nightmare, aight?!” exclaimed Sway, satisfied that his pupil beat the master’s challenge.

The energy in that SiriusXM studio was supercharged with excitement. “There was a lot of trust involved with him trusting me to kill it in that high-stakes, potentially viral moment,” Frak reflects now with gratitude. “It was dope.”

Co-signs from certified OGs filled him with the motivation he needed. As soon as Frak touched down in San Francisco, where he was born and raised, he announced a Feb. 17 concert and birthday celebration at El Rio with his collective, the 17-member-deep Family Not a Group, where he plans to recreate some of that freestyle magic on stage. And his momentum just kept going: Earlier this week, Frak made his debut as co-host on a new Thizzler YouTube show called Bar Wars, where he talks current events and hosts rap competitions with hyphy hitmaker D-Lo, Thizzler’s C Lee and rapper-comedian King Boolu. Right afterward, he dropped a new single called “Splain,” the first from his upcoming album, Uncanny Valley.

“I have all this music that I’ve been holding back because I was waiting for the perfect time, and after the Sway thing, it’s really put a fire under me to be really consistent,” Frak says on a recent afternoon at Billy Goat Hill, a tranquil park in Noe Valley with immaculate views of the San Francisco skyline.

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rak chose this spot for our interview because it’s where he spent countless hours freestyling with friends growing up. “I even freestyled here alone once, which is kind of sad, looking back,” he jokes as we stand among the trees.

Frak’s journey in rap started before he entered high school, when he was a College Dropout obsessive regularly posting on a site called KanyeTalk.com. He, fellow Family Not a Group member Kaly Jay and Hurd-Bird (who grew up to be sports journalist Sean Hurd) had a group called 4real. “The fourth member was the music. We were really deep and corny,” Frak says with a grin.

Frak is self-deprecating for someone who’s been winning rap accolades since he was a 15-year-old member of Youth Speaks, the long-running San Francisco spoken-word poetry program. He won the organization’s MC Olympics, which earned him the prize of opening for Casey Veggies and pre-fame Travis Scott at Oakland’s New Parish.

The competition opened many doors: One of the judges was Baba Zumbi, Zion I’s late, beloved MC, who became Frak’s mentor. Another judge, Jamie DeWolf, invited Frak to perform at his anarchist variety show Rumpus & Ruckus Revival (formerly Tourettes Without Regrets).

When Frak got there, he realized he had been signed up for a rap battle against his will. Although reluctant (“I’m a conscious, positive artist,” he remembers thinking), he embraced the challenge. “It was like you’re collaborating with someone by insulting each other,” he learned that night.

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rom there, Frak delved into battle rap, perhaps the niche where he’s best known today. Though part of hip-hop culture, battle rap is closer to spoken word and theater than music — opponents rap mostly pre-written verses a cappella. Some, like Frak, eke out victories through sneaky humor and clever wordplay, while others embrace the role of villain with overbearing body language and volume.

In a New Yorker column, writer Jay Caspian Kang once called battle rap “a community of problematic dudes who stand around on a stage and yell insults at one another for an audience of other problematic dudes.”

“Some people condescend it in that way, as do I. But I actually do think if aliens came to Earth like 20,000 years from now, I think battle rap is the most evolved writing that’s ever happened in society,” Frak says.

With a month to prepare before each battle (“It’s a … stressful process where I become a shitty boyfriend and disappear into my own world,” he says), rappers do extensive opposition research to land the lowest of blows. Potentially offensive topics like race, religion and sexuality aren’t off limits.

In Frak’s case, opponents tend to go after his relative privilege, his whiteness and his Jewish identity (they’ve also made digs at the fact that his dad is an astronomer). In a way, getting constantly called out for things he can’t change has pushed him into a sort of radical self-acceptance. People might assume he’s a hip-hop outsider — cognizant of his place in a Black art form, he refers to himself as a “guest in the culture” — but his sincerity and meticulous craftsmanship inevitably disarm doubters when he grabs a microphone.

Frak is applying that same growth mindset now to his recorded music and other upcoming projects, including a pilot episode of a battle rap-based cartoon. When it comes to songwriting, it’s not just word nerds that he’s trying to appeal to: Tracks like the new “Splain” and “Gelato,” featuring Jada Imani’s velvety neo-soul vocals, showcase a more laid-back, melodic style that feels at home over fuzzed-out, stoner-y jazz beats and Bay-centric blaps alike. He also plays with zeitgeist-y topics: San Francisco’s gentrification is a recurring touchpoint, and Uncanny Valley riffs on how the rise of AI has bent the corners of what’s real or possible.

Frak had a stint in Los Angeles to pursue his creative dreams and returned to San Francisco during the pandemic. For now, he’s perfectly happy staying rooted in his hometown, where collaborations and new projects are constantly percolating for him and Family Not a Group, which includes comedians, rappers, singers and DJs, many of whom are community organizers and educators by day.

“I feel like we kind of created our own subculture in San Francisco,” he says. “Like, we made it poppin’ again and decided to take it upon ourselves to make fun nightlife, and throw concerts and studio sessions where artists can meet each other. So that energy that I felt bubbling up really solidified [my] wanting to stay in the Bay Area and work on making the Bay Area lit.”

Frak’s B-Day Bonanza takes place on Saturday, Feb. 17, at El Rio in San Francisco, with performances from Oflo, Grand-O, Pass, Kaly Jay, Xanubis and Ash, and DJ sets from Baghead, Made By Harry, Will Randolph V, Jenset, 2-E2 and DJSay. Details and tickets here.