Source: Amazon / Amazon
Representatives for YEEZY and YZY GAP are clearing the air on questions and confusion regarding what’s being done with the proceeds earned by the live-streamed “Free Larry Hoover” benefit concert put on in Los Angeles by hitmakers and beef squashers Drake and Kanye West.
As previously reported, last week’s concert was named for Larry Hoover, the former Chicago gang leader and Gangster Disciples founder who is serving multiple life sentences in Colorado after being convicted of murder in 1973. The feds have gone full anti-Black ops in expressing their displeasure with Hoover being celebrated, but many prison reform advocates believed he isn’t the same man he was when he went inside and that his sentence was harsher than it should have been.
But after multiple media outlets reported that only the proceeds from ticket sales would go to various criminal justice reform groups and that the revenue from merchandise sales wasn’t set to go to charity, Ye and Drake’s representatives put out a statement clarifying that, yes, a portion of those proceeds were earmarked for reform groups as well.
The representatives told Blavity that some of the proceeds from merch sales would go to groups such as Ex-Cons for Community and Social Change, Hustle 2.0 and Chicago’s Uptown People’s Law Center. A representative from Amazon, where much of the merch is being sold, confirmed to GQ that some of the proceeds were going to those reform groups as well.
Listen: When we talk about the merchandise being sold by the “Free Lary Hoover” concert, we’re not talking cheap keychains and number stickers—we’re talking items that include a $200 hoodie, a $360 jumpsuit, a $100 T-shirt and $400 jeans. One would hope that at least some of the money spent on items with that kind of price tag would be for the cause rather than just for profit.
Also, don’t listen to the feds. When it comes to Black criminality, America believes in disposal, not reform.