When grieving, outraged crowds marched through downtown Chicago on Saturday, May 30, to protest the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, Chicago rapper Femdot was among them. And when Chicago cops began assaulting those protesters, he was among the targets—one or more officers struck him in the head with a baton. Even after a hospital trip to have his injury closed with staples, Femdot—born Femi Adigun—didn’t shrink from the fight against systemic racism and police brutality. But he did let friends talk him out of heading right back into the streets—in part because a new front in his struggle against injustice and inequity opened the very next day. On Sunday, May 31, Chicago Public Schools responded to citywide unrest by announcing that it was suspending its free lunch program as of Monday.

“What about people who can’t get there? The elderly, or people who are scared of COVID, things of that sort,” he says. “And also, when I was driving back, leaving the neighborhood, I didn’t see a grocery store open. So the next day I started delivering groceries.”

The biweekly schedule of the Scholars Slide By has allowed Adigun to continue volunteering with other food distribution efforts, including the People’s Grab-N-Go and Feed the West Side, a monthly initiative based in Austin that’s overseen by the Pivot Gang-affiliated John Walt Foundation. He’s stayed busy enough with community service this summer that he nearly forgot about a big booking that COVID-19 had canceled for him. “I was out doing something and I realized, like, ‘Damn, I was supposed to be doing Pitchfork today,’” he says. “That would’ve been cool.”

“It’s cool to know that when the world fails us, we’ll take care of ourselves,” Adigun says. “For everyone to be figuring it out together, it gives me a sense of peace in the midst of all this. A lot of times when we’re doing this, stuff is stressful, but those end up being some of the best days.”

Delacreme 2 by Femdot

Adigun’s mother, Siki, didn’t know her son was even interested in rapping until 2012, when he won a competition at Homewood-Flossmoor High School at age 16. Siki considered her eldest son, Kola, who’s 12 years Adigun’s senior, to be the MC of the house. When Kola made music in the basement of the family home, Adigun would watch him work. “Femi, we knew he was listening—but nobody knew he had that interest until high school,” Siki says.