Gucci Mane under fire for packed Houston performance
The Address, where Mane performed, announced it would be offering free, drive-through COVID-19 testing.
Atlanta rapper Gucci Mane has gone viral again. This time it wasn’t for a record-breaking appearance on Verzuz, but for a performance at Houston nightclub, where he played in front of a packed, maskless crowd.
The club, called The Address, told The Houston Chronicle that “local, county and state guidelines were in place and executed.”
The video, originally shared by XXL magazine, was a scan of a huge crowd, and no one appeared to be wearing a mask.
“When their parents and grandparents die because ……… just had to see Gucci. Nice work,” one user replied.
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Another user addressed the caption posted by the hip-hop magazine, implying that it should read: “Gucci Mane hosted a Super Spreader in Houston last night.”
The Address announced it would be offering free, drive-through COVID-19 testing by online appointment in response to the backlash.
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Harris County, where Houston sits, has over 210,000 coronavirus cases and over 3,100 deaths from it.
Tanna Ingraham, an ICU nurse in the city, recently tested positive for the virus a second time. “It hit me a lot harder and a lot quicker this time,” she told ABC13. “It feels like someone hit you with a baseball bat.”
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Ingraham spent a week in the hospital as a patient. The facility where she works is not slated to be targeted in the first round of vaccinations in Houston.
“For them to completely bypass us… you can’t be any more frontline than we are right now,” she said. “We have some really sick patients, and our hospital mainly treats COVID-19.”
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The Houston Department of Health recently announced that COVID-19 cases in the city could be as much as four times higher than previously indicated. The findings were the result of a September survey of random households, in which 678 Houstonians gave a blood sample to detect the presence of coronavirus antibodies.
Chron, a Houston-based culture magazine, directly called out the rapper, writing, “If there is a COVID spike in Houston, thank Gucci Mane.”
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