21 Savage is on a mission to “break cycles of poverty” in the Black community. The Atlanta rapper plans to make sure that the youth in his city and beyond have the resources to help with the “lack of financial literacy,” that “can often lead to a lot of hardships later on.”
Inspired by his own experiences, In 2018, the GRAMMY-Awards winning rapper started a financial-literacy campaign called "Bank Account” in hopes of encouraging young people to take charge of their financial futures. Sharing, “when I was a kid, I knew there had to be a way to understand how to make and save money—but no one was teaching me that in my Atlanta schools.”Since then, he’s teamed up with various companies and foundations to launch different programs to help further the main message of his campaign along.
Now, 21 is taking pen to paper, or should we say fingers to keyboard, in a piece for TIME, sharing his personal thoughts on just “how systemic these issues are.”
In doing so he hopes to educate and steer those who are dealing with such issues in a direction of positive action, and away from feelings of defeat. “Redlining, a discriminatory practice that denied home loans based on race or ethnicity, has left some of the largest impacts we see in the families of Black, Indigenous and people of color when it comes to intergenerational wealth and assets inequality. But in many communities, there remain a lot of myths around building wealth, and distrust of financial institutions.”
His main goal is for the “the next generation to have a head start and the knowledge on the value of making good financial decisions so they have a clear path to achieve success and financial security.” Which he believes help in developing additional skills like responsibility and discipline, as well as building self-confidence, “which in turn can help facilitate a healthy transition into adulthood.”
The Atlanta native goes on to give personal advise, and believes that first and foremost, “you need to pay yourself first. Every time you get paid, put a little bit away for you so you can set yourself up for the long run.” Next, he notes the importance of working with “trusted financial institutions, such as Juma Ventures, who he previously partnered with for one of his programs.
As 21 continues to push forward his mission and agenda, the least we can do is follow suit. He obviously knows what he’s talking about, after all he’s “got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight M's in my bank account.”
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