Down-but-not-out East Bay rapper holds onto his dream

[...] only a handful of confidants know the story masked by the image — that the East Bay rapper P Money was homeless for the past seven months, and that his 15-year-old Benz doubled most nights as his shelter. From September until this month, P Money, born Randy Dwayne Harrison, had been living in his ride, spending nights parked at the Energy Gas & Mart station just off Interstate 80 in Richmond, the town he grew up in. [...] at 37, still seeking the break he’s been after for a decade, he’d kept his situation hidden from friends, fellow musicians — even his mom. In that time, his beard has gotten gray specks, his brothers have gotten married and had children, and the chances of a record label signing him, a man pushing 40, have slimmed. The 9-to-5 jobs that have sustained him over the years have ranged from warehouse worker to now, ironically, homeless shelter custodian. “Only thing I’m afraid of is my age,” he said, standing outside his job at East Oakland Community Project. YG’s debut album, “My Krazy Life,” hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hip Hop/R&B chart as soon as it dropped in 2014. What started as a friendly Instagram exchange between P Money and Slim 400 a few months ago turned into a real business opportunity. P Money and his manager, Joseph Sanchez, struck a deal with Slim to rap on P Money’s latest song, “When I Pull Up.” P Money made connections, then went back home. Before his rap session with Slim 400, P Money’s music career looked bleak. In January 2015, he released an album on iTunes, “Bad News from tha Block.” Things went south for P Money and his parents in the fall, when their landlord died and his son sold all of his property, including P Money’s childhood home on Lincoln Avenue off 23rd Street, a neighborhood designated as “vulnerable” for gentrification in a study by UC Berkeley’s Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society. Affording a new place in one of the nation’s hottest housing markets was out of the question: P Money’s father is pushing 60 and hasn’t worked in over two years after an injury on a construction job. More often than not, it was P Money helping his parents, who depend on Social Security, to pay the rent with his paycheck from his job at the homeless shelter. Sweeping old boxes of Newport cigarettes from the parking lot, restocking latex gloves and toilet paper, taking out the trash. [...] after paying up to $40 for studio sessions and making $398 monthly car payments on the Benz he bought used two years ago, he’s left counting change. In the days leading up to his latest music video for the song “When I Pull Up,” P Money was still pinching pennies. In the back seat of his silver 2001 Mercedes was a plastic container with a row of baseball caps, meticulously aligned, and a bulky blue radio. Sitting in the passenger seat, he carefully cut erasers from the end of pencils to use as backs for his earrings. From the gas station, P Money and his entourage carpooled to 7515 International Blvd. in Oakland, the homeless shelter where he works and one of the sites featured in the video. Theresa Macey, a housing advocate and respite nurse, has been friends with P Money since he started working there. Richmond was not the safest place, he said, and his youth was tainted by drug dealing, gang activity and the death of his best friend in a shooting over a stolen bicycle. [...] that his living situation looks to be stable, he plans to focus on making his other dream come true.