Frak The Person Is the Actual Mayor of San Francisco

If you go to hip-hop shows in the Bay Area, there’s a good chance you’ve run into Frak The Person, San Francisco’s lovable, multi-hyphenate battle rapper-slash-comedian and community fixture. Maybe it was at the Halloween party that he and his crew of friends, Family Not A Group (FNG), hosted a few years ago at Bottom of the Hill. Or maybe it was at a rap show in Oakland, where he often pulls up in support of other Bay Area spitters, cracking jokes and giving daps throughout the venue like a beloved rap czar. 

Wherever it was, Frak — alum of the Bay Area spoken word institution YouthSpeaks, and son of a renowned astronomy professor — was likely doing what he does best: connecting with everything around him. Namely, he makes others feel better about the dystopian hellscape we collectively inhabit, while repping his hometown, Frisco, with the vigor of a de facto mayor (minus the corny, self-promotional thumbs-upping at cameras).

Above all else, Frak, whose name is an abbreviated play on his family’s Hungarian last name, Fraknoi, has proven himself as much more than a battle rap emcee. Since he debuted in 2014 with his album Bagels, the Lick-Wilmerding High School grad has carved out a unique place in the local underground scene, making a name for himself as one of the most versatile, theatrical, and community-bound lyricists to emerge from San Francisco in recent memory. His repertoire is chameleonic, whether he’s freestyling on Kai Cenat livestreams in front of more than 500,000 viewers or delivering stand-up comedy-esque lines on MTV’s Wild ‘n Out. Frak has been co-signed by Wyclef Jean, E-40, and Nick Cannon. He’s wowed the hosts of the legendary Sway in the Morning, and earned mentorship from revered independent artists, such as the late Baba Zumbi of Zion I. So what’s there left for the rhymer to prove?

Up to this point, it turns out, everything has just been “a side quest.” But it all prepared him for his latest, most ambitious mixtape project and live show extravaganza, which he describes as part of his “main quest.” It’s called Four Square.

What initially began as a rotating video series centered on four-bar exchanges between Bay Area rap figures — including IAMSU!, Nef the Pharoah, and Seiji Oda — soon grew into a playful 16-track project: 16 songs because, mathematically, that’s the result of four, squared (*insert mind blown emoji*). The classic schoolyard ballgame became the perfect framework for the reflexive, back-and-forth nature of his interactive vision, which includes a lot of competitive, in-the-moment jousting between rap guests who are the players (literal and figurative) throughout the album. It’s simply a bunch of artists having fun, with hilariously unserious moments in songs like “Heat Check,” in which G-Eazy appears for a Wild West shootout between two white rappers, opening with Frak’s old-timey-accented declaration: “There can only be one Bay Area white boy in these parts.”

“Four Square captured that battle rap energy. It’s two emcees going back and forth, building off each other, trading ideas. But instead of tearing each other down, we’re building something up,” Frak tells me over the phone, during a nearly hour-long interview in which he leaves his home, takes a stroll in the rain, and eventually ends up at Mulan Malatang, a Chinese noodle shop in SF’s Inner Richmond, where he continues to talk while audibly downing a bowl of soup. “I usually write songs that take months, then I come back to it precisely. But with Four Square, you have to do it all in one- or two-hour sessions. It’s on the spot. You have to be OK with what happens and make collaborative art with whoever is in the room. That makes it different. That makes it live and brings excitement. [In the Bay,] there aren’t enough platforms or ways to unite. That was a part of my reason for making this.”

On Friday, Jan. 30, at The Independent in Frisco, Frak used that same energy to bridge the Bay together for his Four Square release party. The potpourri of performances included an actual four square court, rappers playing as themselves in a real-world video game, satirical sketches, and live narration from San Francisco standup comedian Mike Evans Jr.

“I wrote a script and we all did skits. Everyone who was brought on stage was introduced like a new unlocked character in a video game, and everyone showed up focused and actually knew their lines,” Frak explains.

Good reader, imagine a stageful of iconic rappers from all over the Bay Area’s expansive multiverse, essentially performing a Broadway theater act in unison. What the actual fuck.

A few of Frak’s comedic personas — Barry the Barsplainer and Mayor Daniel Lurie — made surprise cameos. Additional hitters like East Oakland’s 1100 Himself appeared as an East Bay baseball field; Fillmore’s Stunnaman02 popped in as a San Francisco rooftop; Tia Nomore became a Johnny Tsunami character, wave riding her way across Ocean Beach. It was all animated for the audience, and directed by Adam Dexter.

“The feeling after the show was like, when are we gonna do this again? The show itself was a testament to when there is a platform and a unifying thing that people can be a part of, and it’s lit, that it can work. We got to [tell stories], roast each other, rap. The concept is that we were trapped in the game. Mike, who was also trapped in the game, was standing on the top balcony and providing funny comedic moments to everything [as the omniscient narrator]. Everything tied it together.” 

Frak credits his group of closest homies, FNG (personally my favorite arts collective to emerge out of San Francisco in the past decade) for providing a foundation and the creative support network to execute something as outrageous as Four Square. When I jokingly nudge Frak to run for mayor, he shoots down my nomination with a quickness, instead suggesting his friend and FNG’s co-founder, Afterthought.

“I’m just trying to make fun of the mayor,” he says of his recent Lurie impressions. “I’m definitely not the mayor of San Francisco and would never run for mayor. AFT [Afterthought] is my mayor.”

If Frak were to run for mayor, though? “There’s actually an ex-rapper who’s the current mayor in NYC… Zohran,” he says. “[His raps were] pretty garbage, but he’s a sick mayor. I’d run a similar campaign to him. Daniel Lurie is just a vibes mayor. But when Zohran did his whole affordability thing, I think that’s what San Franciscans are really looking for instead of vibes. We need affordability, education, housing. There are all these empty homes and hiked up rents. I’d like that to become affordable housing, and to give all the artists big grants." Free weed? That too.

The artist has voyaged a long way since his origins as Frak The MC, a moniker he later changed to “Person” in order to reflect his full abilities beyond emceeing. One thing that hasn’t wavered: his inclination to speak out on important issues (e.g., hosting an event in support of Prop. M, San Francisco’s vacancy tax proposition, which city voters passed in 2024). Last week, Frak posted a screenshot of an SFPD parking ticket, refusing to pay the fine until the city rightfully paid its teachers, who were then in the middle of a historic strike.

Importantly, as his stardom has continued to rise, he’s insisted on collaboration at each turn — by embracing the Bay’s coterie of talent on every front, and by ignoring traditional rules about genre and medium.

“Who’s around me and sees my vision? Who do I trust as an artist? The industry is changing very rapidly,” he says. “But battle rap gives me an advantage. I believe that everything is everything, that you have to be able to do it all. Talking about it now, I feel like making Four Square a regular thing could be my main quest.”

He imagines turning Four Square into an ongoing series, in which a cast of Bay Area rappers rotate in and out, or perhaps he would travel to other cities to recruit more participants to join in on the variety show. Personally, after his Four Square campaign, my mind is made up: Frak’s got my vote.