Although hip-hop artist 21 Savage is now 25 years old, he recently revealed that didn’t know about bank accounts or how credit cards worked until he was about 23.
The former street dealer started his rap career at age 21, and wants other young people to become educated about finances a lot earlier than he did. He is doing something to make this happen.
The “Bank Account” hip-hop artist has partnered with the nonprofit youth empowerment organization, Get Schooled, to launch the 21 Savage Bank Account campaign. Through the project, he opened 21 bank accounts for 21 kids and youth with $1,000 in each account.
“They don’t teach you how to save your money or how to manage your money in school. I didn’t know nothing about bank accounts until I was probably about 23. I didn’t know nothing: how to operate a bank account, how to use a card, nothing. So I feel like if I would have learned that early on, I would’ve never made some of the mistakes I made,” 21 Savage told The Source.
The Get Schooled bank accounts include a digital badge, as well as tips for money management, building quality savings, how to spend responsibly and other financial literacy information.
The venture has become part of new documentary filmed by mic.Com, in which 21 Savage visits his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, to meet with one of the people who applied for the bank account.
The applicant, Bill Pongnon, submitted a letter explaining explaining why the $1,000 would benefit him. Bill explained he was born in Haiti but moved to Atlanta as a young boy. Now 17, he is fully independent and no longer living with his parents. Though still in school, he has a job to support himself.
“Now that I do have money in my bank account, I want to help kids with a background similar to mine to get smart about their money,” 21 said in a statement to Vibe earlier this year.
Born Shayaa Bin Abraham-Joseph, 21 Savage has said that material goods don’t matter as much as money in the bank.
“The richest people I’ve ever met didn’t have jewelry. I ain’t wearing no jewelry because I want to be rich! At first, motherf**kers do sh*t because they ain’t ever had nothing,” he told SSENSE. “A lot of these ni**as be having more jewelry than money in their bank account. I ain’t like that.”
21 Savage began rapping in 2013 after the death of a friend, eventually dropping out of school. His 2015 mixtape, “The Slaughter Tape,” gained nationwide attention. He released his debut studio album, “Issa Album,” in 2017 and it debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200.
“It’s a lot of poverty in our communities, like where I’m from. You can’t get taught how to manage money by somebody that’s poor,” 21 said, according to allHipHop.com. “They don’t teach you how to save your money or how to manage your money in school.”
He added, “A white child, they be having their life already set up. Their parents set their life up: ‘We’re going to give you this much money so you can do this. We’re going to give you this much money a week for allowance.’ In Black communities, we don’t really have that. It’s a lot of poverty in our communities, like where I’m from. You can’t get taught how to manage money by somebody that’s poor. So if your mom poor, she ain’t gonna be able to teach you how to manage money ’cause she poor.”
I don’t even know 21 Savage but I love how he carries himself! Salute to him & his recent donation to Get Schooled!
— Lalaa (@LalaaShep) March 14, 2018
