Vic Mensa has spoken out after the premises of his non-profit foundation SaveMoneySaveLife was burgled on New Year’s Eve.

The rapper launched the organisation back in 2018, which aims to “use art and entertainment to foster sustainable change” with a keen focus on Mensa’s home city of Chicago.

Mensa posted about the burglary on his Instagram account yesterday (January 11), explaining that SaveMoneySaveLife’s “entire donation inventory was robbed” on December 31.

“Sadly, we were set up and someone brought a truck to our Southside Chicago location and cleaned us out of over $40,000 worth of brand new shoes,” he explained – you can watch Mensa speak about the robbery in the below video.

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“I founded the organisation in 2018 to help the city I call home and since then we’ve donated 100,000+ pounds of food, over 50,000 pairs of shoes and countless PPE supplies since the dawn of the pandemic,” Mensa explained, before thanking “everyone who has supported us thus far”.

In a bid to recoup the losses sustained in the robbery, SaveMoneySaveLife has launched a fundraising campaign.

“When we arrived the morning of New Years Day, our team discovered all of our items ransacked and thousands of dollars worth of shoes stolen,” the organisation explained about the incident in a statement. “We had a huge shoe distribution planned (postponed due to COVID-19) and all the shoes we collected were taken.

“Countless hours, money and energy went in to acquiring and organising these donations and has left us deeply disheartened by this loss.”

Vic Mensa released the surprise mixtape ‘V Tape’ back in August, features guest appearances from the likes of BJ The Chicago Kid, Eryn Allen Kane, Peter CottonTale and SAINt JHN.