Unkle Adams

About

Unkle Adams aka Unk is a Canadian rapper known for a wholesome message, though his songs are critically panned. In early 2018, he gained internet infamy for announcing he was $164,000 in debt and starting a vlog to attempt to go from 18,000 monthly Spotify listeners to 1 million to help him get out of debt.

History

Unkle Adams (real name Curtis Adams) was born in Saskatchewan, Canada. His artist name was a nickname he got due to the fact that his nephew is a few days older than him. On July 1st, 2013, he uploaded his first video to YouTube, called "One of a Kind,"^[23] which gained over 96,000 views.

Dark Unk

Before reinventing himself as a motivational rapper with a positive message, Unkle Adams has participated in rap battles and had a style similar to gangster rap. This can be seen in his songs "North Side Queen City"^[5] and "Boozetune"^[6] Unk did not talk about this episode (2000s to early 2010s) of his life for a long time, but he mentioned it in the ALAM episode 32^[7].

Motivational Rapper

On September 14th, 2013, he released his anti-bullying music video "I Am Stronger", which is based on the story of Amanda Todd and remains his most viewed music video to this day. The video did lead to him getting multiple media appearances^[4].

He gained more internet notoriety following the release of his single "Original" on March 16th, 2016, that gained over 217,000 views. On January 14th, 2017, Anthony Fantano uploaded a video with Chris Ray Gun in which they critically panned the song, gaining 330,000 views (shown below, right).

Debt Problems

In February of 2018, Adams grew infamous on forums after starting a vlog series titled "At Least a Million," which is the title of a single he released on September 30th, 2017 (shown below, left). The vlog is designed to try and get Adams over 1 million monthly listeners on Spotify. In the first episode of the series, he announced he was roughly $164,000 in debt due to the funds he used to pursue his music career (shown below, right).

In Episode 8 of the series, he showed off that he had bought 13 televisions despite his debt. He did this because he signed a "six-figure" deal for a tour. However, the tour had fell through, leaving him with the televisions which he intended to sell.^[21] His debt had been racked up to roughly $207,000 in debt. By episode 9 of the series, he had sold the televisions and purchased a used car, and was roughly $220,000 in debt.^[22]

This video caught the attention of Fantano again, who uploaded a video discussing Adams, titled "Chasing Dreams vs. Chasing Delusions" that gained over 160,000 views^[20].

On March 1st, 2018, Fantano published a video titled "Burying the hatchet with Unkle Adams", in which they discussed the videos they made about each other, online harassment, the music industry, and Unkle Adams' plans for the future.

The saga generated interest online in forums, and threads about Unkle Adams have appeared on kanyetothe,^[1] Kiwi Farms,^[2] and Reddit.^[3]

Originalposting

The largest online group discussing Unkle Adams is OGposting on Facebook^[8]. Even during times when Unkle Adams doesn't upload a video or release a song for weeks or months, there are dozens of posts about Unk made every day on the group with over 18,500 members. Members of the group do sometimes refer to each other as "niblings". Most of Unks current followers are members of Originalposting. However, the group is rarely acknowledged by Unkle Adams.

An early member of the group was the political commentator James Allsup. He received some attention in the summer of 2017 when he bought a record from Unkle Adams for $10 + $5 shipping, which he never received. Because of this, lots of people from the group started telling Unk to return the money to him. Eventually he did so. However, Unk only refunded 14,50$, so Allsup lost out on 50 ct. The group members support for him and his activity in the group stopped once they learned about his right wing views.^[26]

Original 2 and Emperor Penguin

On September 1st 2018, Unkle Adams has announced on Twitter that he would make a sequel to the song Original, but did mention three conditions under which he will publish it: If the Needle Drop makes a cameo in the music video, if the tweet gets 2000 retweets and if Original hits 1,000,000 streams on Spotify.^[9] He achieved the goal to get 2000 retweets and 1,000,000 Spotify streams, and later lowered the remaining requirement to just getting 2000 comments (not by different accounts) on an Instagram post.
The song was published on January 1st, 2019^[10] and was nearly universially disliked and quickly forgotten. An Original 2 music video was never made.

On October 29th, he announced that fans can now get a Youtube membership on his channel.^[11] This would allow them to use special emojis in his live stream chat for a monthly payment. However, he did not stream ever since, rendering the memberships useless.

On March 13th 2019, he revealed in a video that he has lowered his debt by $100,000.^[12] However, he only exlpained that he made $25,000 over the years through music streaming revenue. The consensus among OGposting is that his silent investor (who is rumored to be Unkle Adams' dad) relieved him of his debt.

On August 10th, he published the song "THE EXTERMINATION (Colby the Ferret Diss)"^[13] and the video "The AT LEAST A MILLION Mission (Episode 34 – Colby the Ferret)"^[14], responding to Colby Ferrins diss track "Emperor Penguin".^[13] This was seen as him breaking character with his motivational rapper persona and was perceived as him not learning anything from the Fantano saga. In the ALAM video, he did state multiple times that he didn't watch Colbins diss, but he did reference its content in his song ("sitting there in a stupid, little penguin mask").
Colby Ferrin was previously (in 2018) randomly selected by Unkle Adams to win his top hat from the "Original" music video. It is highly doubted (by OGposting) that the selection was truly random.

Nowadays, Unkle Adams does mainly make vlogs^[16], merch announcements^[17] and opinion videos^[18]. He is also active on Twitter^[19].

Dorian Electra collab

Unkle Adams did a collab with Dorian Electra in the form of Unk rapping to the tune of Dorian's "Gentleman". The one minute long music video was posted on social media on August 29th 2020. This was seen (by OGposting) as one of his most important collabs so far. Later, Unk used the Reface app and posted faceswap gifs of him meshed with Lil Uzi Vert and other black rappers. Seeing this as him using "blackface", members of Originalposting criticised him harshly for posting the gifs. Dorian then deleted the collab music video and unfollowed Unk.
Unk deleted the gifs and apologized. He did also unfollow Dorian and double down^[24] on posting the faceswap gifs; e.g. by stating that he doesn't see black and white and by pointing out faceswaps with Elon Musk and Kevin Hart which were generally not perceived as being offensive. Niblings continued to call him out on posting them.
On September 3rd, Unk announced that he will take a break from social media^[25]. This break lasted for 79 days (2 months, 18 days), when he started tweeting again on November 21st. This marks the (probably) longest break from social media he has taken since starting his career as a motivational rapper.

Search Interest

External References