Trek Manifest lives out the stages of grief onstage with ‘Tosca’s Boy Session Part 1’

In the weeks and months before Trek Manifest took the stage at Natalie’s Grandview in early October, he spent hours at home running on his treadmill, rapping his songs out loud to himself as he kept pace as a means to develop and enhance his breath control.

The fruits of this labor are evident early in Tosca’s Boy Sessions Part 1, the first in a planned trio of live albums, out earlier this week on Bandcamp and streaming everywhere on Monday, March 2. Both “Death Wish” and “All Black On,” for example, feature stretches in which Manifest flexes his double-jointed larynx, consonants hitting not in a tumbling, flash flood river of syllables but with the clarity and precision of an assembly line moving at full tilt, each word cleanly discernible in the mix. This technical excellence is buoyed by songs that are deeply, resonantly emotional, the Columbus rapper focusing his efforts on the tracks that he wrote in the aftermath of his mom’s death, which hit unexpectedly on his birthday in October 2019. (Manifest initially planned for the Natalie’s show to take place on the sixth anniversary of her passing, opting to push back a week in order to preserve that day for himself.)

Nowhere does this gut punch land harder than in the rapper’s performance of “Own,” a song in which he recounts the day of his mom’s death, the panicked text messages he received from his father telling him there was an emergency, and the denial, anger, bargaining, and depression that swirled in messy waves within him in the months and years he wrestled with the loss. 

“There was definitely anger, for sure. And that song always gets to me, and it’s hard to perform it. And it’s not just the emotion of it, but because I refuse to clean it up,” said Manifest, who recalled how the track felt hollowed out when he censored a performance of it while playing to the families gathered at the Jazz & Rib Fest. “And I was on that stage like, ‘I really want to say fuck, because that’s how I feel.”

At Natalie’s as documented in Tosca’s Boy Sessions, Manifest doesn’t hold back, the veins in his neck practically straining as he vents his frustrations, rapping, “Fuck whoever got problems with me. And fuck whoever turn their back on me.”

“That song is one I’m always going to perform. It’s an intention, like, I’m going to do it, and I’m going to discuss it. I know there’s someone else out there going through it. So, trust me and let all your tears out, because I’m right there with you,” said Manifest, who acknowledged that the only two thoughts running through his mind as he performed the song at Natalie’s were “don’t mess up and don’t cry.” “And when I got to the end, I was like, man, I didn’t cry. And usually I’m a wreck, because that song brings me back to that story. But I need that as a form of healing, and sometimes it’s good to go back to remember what happened, how you got to this point. It shows how much I love her.”

Manifest is supported in this journey by a trio of backup singers and a pared-down lineup of the Aye-1 Band consisting of drummer Deron Sutton and keyboardist Joshua Lyles, Sr. Collectively, the musicians embrace the set at Natalie’s as a chance to accompany listeners through the stages of grief, the set climaxing with the stormy “Own” before the weather breaks with a medley of “Come In” and “Chasing After You,” the former built around airy, prancing keys that evoke the feeling of a sunny springtime morning. 

There also exists within Tosca’s Boy Sessions a strong spiritual element, with Manifest channeling a preacher overcome by the spirit on the set-opening “Devin’s Anthem,” repeating his calls to “lift me up” with a growing, rafter-shaking fervor. Then again toward the end of the set Manifest returns his eyes to the heavens, acknowledging the comfort he has discovered in his ever-blossoming relationship to God. 

The musician comes by these influences naturally – his mom was a pastor, and he grew up within the church – though he described the emerging spirituality within his songs as a reflection of the intention with which he wants to approach his daily life from this point forward. “I can’t just sit here and be this guy who grew up in the church and sprinkles those things into my music without living it,” he said.

This sense of compression is part of what has made Manifest’s albums so routinely compelling, the rapper continually condensing the space that exists between the music and the man to the point that the two have become virtually indiscernible. It’s a reality that holds whether he’s spitting about living his faith or falling to his knees to extoll the way that grief can contract or relax its grip, recovery falling not along a straight incline but rather an endless roller coaster of ups and downs. 

“The idea [for the live album] came from wanting to give myself clarity and the opportunity to grieve onstage,” he said. “It’s probably me overthinking, but there were times I felt like, ‘Man, I’m always talking about my mom. I’m always grieving.’ And the reality is there’s no timetable on it. … And Tosca’s Boy Sessions is really just a way for me to tell the story of how I’m doing, what’s going right, what’s going wrong, and then how I’m moving forward.”