We were lucky to catch up with Papi Grasa recently and have shared our conversation below.
Papi, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
My First official music video. It’s a tribute to my late grandmother Ms. Nebraska (ma ma). The song is titled “Gravy” where majority of the video takes place in the bathroom which a lot people found to be intriguing. Growing up I was always a kid who took my time doing any and everything moving at my own pace even when it came to using the bathroom. So she would call the bathroom my office because that’s where i handle my business lol. Even if my friends came over, or if someone called me on the phone etc. if I was in the bathroom she would just let the know that I was in my office. I started to take my music career seriously in may of 2022. My grandmother Ms. Nebraska passed just a couple months later in July which kind of derailed things. But once I got back to business I felt it was only right to handle business in what my grandmother would call “my office”.
Papi, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I’m from Rocky Mount, NC a small city where I fell in love with rap as a jit and instead of coming together to try and push the music scene from my city across the states it seemed like everyone was in competition with each other. Pulling each other down, fighting for local recognition which really deterred me from pursuing a career then and I actually called it quits. Over the following years watching my brothers Donnie Visa and KelseyKobeBryant continue to grind and make music even seeing them blossom once they moved away from our hometown always kept me inspired. Long story short it had been about 10 years since I had recorded any music and after the Covid-19 pandemic I said hey what the heck we only get life and things that I’ve always wanted to do like drop a music project and I felt it was now or never. So in May of 2022 I got back in the studio for the first time in 10 years. Recorded my single “Buddy Love” and released it on dsp’s later that same month just to get some feedback. I knew that I liked it, it was authentic to me and I didn’t sound like anybody else but the responses were crazy. So over the next couple months I worked on putting together a project that will be releasing in the first quarter of this year. Also investing in myself by learning graphic design and some videography basically becoming a content creator and haven’t hands in fashion design and merchandising. I am an artist/content creator under the Approved Way brand where we do everything in house. Where we have our own producers/engineers, photographers/videographers/graphics designers rappers/artists merchandising/promo and marketing.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
For me, I just want to retire my parents. I get up and work everyday because that what I seen them do, I want them to be able to relax and for my kids I want to give them a good foundation,. Leave them something that they’ll be able to pass on to their kids and so on.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
You have to stay consistent. Also think out of the box, outside of your hometown the world is full of people and most of your supporters are going to be people you don’t even know.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/papi_grasa?igshid=Zjc2ZTc4Nzk=
- Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/1676747429/
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@papi_grasa
- Other: I’m also a brand ambassador for the Cocoburry brand. You can shop here and use my discount code COGRASA1 to get 30% off your order. https://m.cocoburry.co/papigrasa