Yolanda Adams is one of the leading voices in Gospel music.
She has been the beacon of grace and dignity and has always kept it together for the public. Despite this, a recent photo alludes to her possibly having a raunchier side before her career took off. Did Yolanda Adams really attend the ’90s festival Freaknik with rapper Trina?
Freaknik was an annual spring festival in Atlanta, Georgia. It was attended mostly by students from historically black colleges like Spellman, Clark Atlanta, and Morehouse.
It was initially just a picnic in 1993, but it ballooned into something much bigger, including dance contests, concerts, parties, a basketball tournament, and a film festival. They even included a job fair. By 1999 the festival was shut down due to pressure from the police department to tone things down.
While there was a version of it in 2019 called “FreakNik Atlanta ’19 – The Festival,” a 2020 follow-up was canceled due to COVID-19. T-Pain also resurrected the party in the form of a film musical that aired on Adult Swim in 2010.
Rapper Trina is synonymous with down-south hip-hop and club culture. In 1995 she was only 17 years old. The Miami native and friends found themselves right in the thick of Freaknik in recently resurfaced a photo from the party.
While it is unclear where the images surfaced from or if it is, in fact, from the festival, Trina can be seen seated in a car with three other women. The women are listed as Kimberly Elise, Kidada Jones, and Yolanda Adams.
Kidada Jones is the daughter of Quincy Jones and an actress, model, and fashion designer. She was a fixture in ’90s cool kid culture and frequently kicked it with Aaliyah, Tamia, Kate Hudson, Nicole Richie, and Oliver Hudson.
She briefly dated Tupac Shakur and LL Cool J. While her attendance at a festival would not be super farfetched, Yolanda and Kimberly are more concerning. Kimberly Elise is a serious actress who in 1995 would have been a year shy of her big screen debut in Set It Off.
Elise is fiercely religious, so it is unclear if it is actually her in the photo.
Trina says quit playing with Yolanda Adams 😂https://t.co/52WCdDrY0T pic.twitter.com/jywMZ3D5FG
— HipHopDX (@HipHopDX) December 29, 2022
Yolanda Adam’s inclusion is the most puzzeling. It is hard to make out if the woman is actually her, but the Gospel singer probably would not have been at such a raunchy event in 1995. The “Open My Heart” vocalist was already four albums into her career at the time, just having released More Than a Melody in 95.
Fans online immediately doubted it was here but laughed along, saying, “They said that’s Yolanda Adams in that FreakNik picture & I been cryingggg laughing.”
Another person said, “Y’all got Yolanda Adams [messed] up fr talking about that’s her in the freaknik picture!” Most people strongly doubt it was her in the photo, and she nor any of the other women suspected to be in the shot have confirmed or denied it.
Trina responded to a repost from Lil Duval laughing and denying that it is Yolanda.
Lil Yachty and Drake last night at 21 Savage’s FreakNik party. pic.twitter.com/qFBP95jW07
— Everything Georgia (@GAFollowers) October 23, 2022
