Noname is beyond grateful for the power of community after people came through in a major way and saved her book club from having to shut down.
On Sunday (February 2), the Chicago MC took to Instagram with a Hail Mary for her Noname Book Club, which chooses two books written by people of color to read each month and sends them to incarcerated book club members for free.
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In her post, she revealed that due to waning donations (support is provided by a Patreon where people can pledge as low as $1 a month), she was in danger of having to shut down because she simply could not carry the costs herself.
But in just one day, her community came together and made more than she asked for to keep the amazing program going.
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“never in my life will i ever again doubt the power of community. in less than 24 hours we made it to our goal!!!” she wrote in an update. “february was slated to be the month we close operations due to a lack of funds. now i’m sitting here crying tears of joy. i can’t thank y’all enough.”
She did reveal, however, the club is not yet in a place to take on new members.
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“after my post yesterday i got many requests from you all to add your incarcerated family/ friends to our books-to-prison program. truth is we made just enough to stay open but not enough to reopen our waiting list,” she noted. “currently there’s about 300 incarcerated folks on our waiting list hoping to be added. when we get to 15k paid subscribers we will have enough to add new folks to our book mailing list! Please keep sharing and subscribing.
“Because most people sign up at our $1 tier it takes a lot of subs to reach our financial goals. but by the grace of god, the universe, and many of you wonderful souls we are well on our way. thank you from the top and bottom of my heart! we asked for a black history month miracle and that’s exactly what we got. sending everyone so much love!”
Back in 2023, Noname took a bold risk by calling out some of Hip Hop and R&B’s most beloved figures by name for working with the NFL. Among them was JAY-Z, but she later clarified that she feels no resentment toward him.
In an interview clip shared by Apple Music’s Ebro Darden weeks after her diss, the Chicago MC set the record straight regarding her confrontational bars from Sundial‘s “Namesake” that had her spitting: “I ain’t fuckin’ with the NFL or JAY-Z/ Propaganda for the military complex.”
On that same track, she also faulted Rihanna, Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar for their affiliation with the football league despite numerous allegations of its stakeholders blackballing Colin Kaepernick for protesting police brutality. Despite her directness on the track, she maintains that people have misunderstood what she was trying to get at.
“I don’t hate this man,” she said about Hov, who now produces the Super Bowl Halftime Show. “I don’t know JAY-Z. He’s a total stranger. We just have ideological differences. That’s all, which the song was just talking about a lot of things, but definitely complacency from all of us.
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“I think the names got the most focus like, ‘Go Rihanna, go. Go, Beyonce, go.’ But really that was supposed to be me mimicking the crowd, like this is how y’all look, making all these critiques about folks on the internet but then we be running to the shows to go and support.”
She added: “I have made similar moves in my own career where I’ve contradicted myself, where I’ve done things or supported institutions that I don’t really believe in, and that’s why I called the song ‘Namesake,’ because even though I’m saying all this stuff, I am the same. We are all one in the same.”
