
08/08/2025
Finding Harmony, Not Alibis: A Conversation with Lil Poppa
By Princess Savage
By the time Lil Poppa was old enough to drive, he’d already been rapping for nearly a decade.
Raised in Jacksonville and baptized in both gospel and grief, Poppa—born Janarious Wheeler—learned early how to navigate contradiction: balancing street survival with spiritual conviction, and pain with poetic control. He was eight when he first started rapping, inspired by what he’d heard in the works of rappers like Bow Wow and Lil Wayne. Now at 25, his music has gained a reputation for being as raw as it is reflective—not just as a voice from the South, but as a voice for reason and healing through shared experience. His latest project, Almost Normal Again, is less about returning to the past and more about reckoning with what it cost him.
“It’ll never be normal again,” he says plainly.
“So settle for almost.