Life Happened. Richmond’s Mani Draper Chose How to React.

Mani Draper, a rapper, DJ and producer from Richmond, is the embodiment of that old saying, “You can’t control what happens to you, but you can control how you react.”

On his late 2024 project Winning Formxla (produced by Steven King), the lyricist poetically illustrates his urge to make it as a rapper in the Bay Area while navigating all that life throws at him.

On the song “Stones Throw,” he raps, “In spite of everything I lost and what its cost / I can say its been a good year.” The drums on the track fade, giving room to clearly hear his final adlib: “I love you dad.”

Draper’s father passed away last May, leaving the artist in a state of mourning. Ever since, Draper has been on a mission to use his pain to build, not destroy. And despite the death of his father, his own health conditions and a case of possible artistic infringement, Draper has held tight to how he’s chosen to react.

Last month he returned with another album, blxckmxrket. Produced by Heirmax Jordan, the album is a byproduct of the mourning process, Draper says — the celebration that comes after the tears.

On standout track “Winner Is…,” there’s a cold beat switch halfway through the song, during which Draper recites a mini-mantra, “Keep going, tell them to meet you at the top / Plot big, lock in, give it to God.”

As the track transitions, Draper, a member of the East Bay-based Grand Nationxl crew, addresses an elephant that’s been in the room since late last year.

“Kenny came and took the name, swear for God he did / Beat the block with a Ginger Ale, only God know where the body is,” raps Draper.

In November, Kendrick Lamar dropped an album titled GNX, inspired by the Buick Grand National automobile. For the past half-decade, Draper’s been a part of a collective named after that same vehicle.

When the album dropped Draper says the crew had mixed emotions. Personally, he felt “a cloud of disappointment for a few days in the region.”

He was getting calls and texts, but no one was saying anything publicly. “Like, dog, you make a post about everything else,” he says. “You could totally just make a post about that. Why the fuck are you on my phone?”

But after a call his from his mother, he found a more constructive response. “The biggest rapper in the world is aligned with the shit that we on,” Draper says, happy to be sharing the same sentiment. “No matter how big you are, no matter how rich you are, where we come from, it don’t get no more lit than a GN.”

Dispelling any notions of appropriation by Lamar or Los Angeles-based artists, Draper elaborates on his “die-hard” love for L.A., noting deep family connections and annual trips to the Garment District for school shopping.

The soundtrack to those trips, Draper reflects, were CDs he’d purchase from the Slauson swap meet. “You’re slapping that shit all the way back to the Bay,” he remembers, “and you didn’t even know it was Bullets Ain’t Got No Name,” referring to the 2008 mixtape from the late Nipsey Hussle.

Ultimately, the experience of seeing Lamar’s rise and the use of the “Grand National” title encouraged Draper to be even more proud of the work he’s working on. And make no mistakes, he’s been working.

For years, Draper’s been behind the scenes, producing, writing and collaborating with the likes of Jane Handcock, IamSu and Kevin “Erk Tha Jerk” Allen.

“It don’t get more talented than those three,” says Draper. He sees being in their proximity as a blessing, pushing him to expand his individual artistry and work as a collective. “Stay close to them, and be willing to step in the service role to help them to maximize their dreams,” Draper explains of his collaborative approach. “And then we just gon’ mob.”

As team-oriented as he is, he’s clearly stepping into his own light. On his recent projects he’s rapping it into existence — with a mix of reflection.

“Them keloids humbled you, now you know you not Spawn,” Draper raps on one track. “Face behind my beard / couldn’t hide the keloids, can’t forget the one on my ear,” he raps on another. 

I ask how he got comfortable with rapping about his keloids, which are visible on his face.

“I’ve had two surgeries at this point,” he tells me. Before one of them, a plastic surgery operation, he was advised that while it could potentially eradicate the growth, it came with the risk of having them come back bigger.

The surgery worked, initially. But oddly, it was the fact that the keloids were momentarily removed that changed him the most.

In 2017, Draper took a trip to Amsterdam. While there he hit it off with a barista. When he returned to Europe a year later, after having the keloids removed, she didn’t recognize him.

“She’s like, ‘What did you do?’” Draper recalls being confused: “I’m like, ‘Huh?’”

The barista told him that the keloids are “the things that make you you.”

It was the first time he realized he had a beauty mark as opposed to a deficiency. “It fucked me up,” Draper says. “I never considered it as the thing — like, I can’t be mistaken for nobody.”

That experience, coupled with working directly with little kids during his day job as an educator, made him choose to work on being more comfortable in his own skin.

Speaking in basketball metaphors, Draper tells me that as an artist, he had to learn how to dribble with his off-hand. “It’s that Kobe shit,” he says. “Work on your weaknesses — be obsessed with your weaknesses, and then eventually that can become your strengths.”

Through that commitment he’s not only grown as an artist, but as a human, and the artistic community around him has benefited because of it.

And especially over the past year, that dedication to growing and the results thereof constitute possibly no better way to honor the legacy of a deceased parent.

“I’m so dialed in on behalf of us,” says Draper. “And I’m gonna make us proud every time.”