Rapper Trae Tha Truth takes food and supplies into Gary, Indiana

Trae Tha Truth turned up in Gary, Indiana on 23 August 2026 and started handing things out. Food, cleaning supplies, whatever families needed, distributed through Relief Gang, the organisation he runs for exactly this. His team also worked on the slower job of pulling fallen trees off houses and out of streets.

The storms hit on 11 August with winds reaching 100mph, and the recovery has been uneven. NBC News reported that 8,600 residents were still without power almost two weeks later. The Associated Press put the wider figure at more than 370,000 customers of Northern Indiana Public Service Co losing power, with more than 364,000 restored by that Monday and the rest expected back the following day.

That gap between the headline number and the last few thousand is where a relief effort either shows up or does not. Trae Tha Truth has built a second career in it, and Relief Gang has become a fixture at American disaster sites in a way that no longer surprises anyone.

Freddie Gibbs, who is from Gary, used the moment to make a point about why the city was in this position. "This wasn't a problem that started with the storm," he told MS NOW, describing a predominantly Black city that gets overlooked, and adding that it is "It's just sad that it takes a national crisis for us to get some type of attention whatsoever." He praised the current mayor, Eddie Melton, for pushing to get Gary the help it needed.

XXL reported both the relief run and the interview on 25 August 2026. Between them they describe the two halves of the same failure: a city that needed a rapper's van to arrive before the story travelled, and a rapper from that city saying so out loud.

The rest of the desk's hip-hop coverage includes other artists putting money behind disaster response, among them Beyonce sending $1 million to Colombia after the August earthquake and the festivals that joined the same relief effort.