AJ Tracey launches fund to help black students go to Oxford University

Artist is contributing £40,000 per year for three years to assist students

(Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for Uni)

AJ Tracey has launched a new college fund for Black students.

The 28-year-old rapper announced that he will be offering financial support for students wanting to go to Oxford University.

As per the announcement, AJ Tracey will be contributing £40,000 per year for three years to aid students in myriad ways, including with outreach, travel assistance and more.

The new fund has been developed with St Peter’s, a college recognised as one of the few Oxford colleges to have accepted Black undergraduates since its foundation in 1929.

“They [St Peter’s] specifically try to get people more of a mixed background, and they’re already working on that task,” the rapper, real name Ché Wolton Grant, said of the initiative. “So for me, it felt like a no-brainer, if the train is already up and running, to help it go.”

“I didn’t just walk in there and think, ‘Let me just randomly sling money at a random cause, you know,” he said

The head of the college Judith Buchanan added: “We’re delighted to have AJ Tracey in our world.

“With his generous support we look forward to seeing current and future talented Black students flourish in their time here.”

(AP)

Tracey also said that having his name attached to this scholarship might “inspire people to think, ‘AJ Tracey’s cool, I listen to his music and he’s from the same kind of background as me. And if he cares about that stuff, maybe I have the right to want to go there.’

“I don’t like it when, in the end, kids are sitting there like really, really bright, getting their grades, and that kind of upper echelon is blocked for them,” the rapper told The Guardian.