GloRilla is catching heat from her own family, and it’s playing out exactly where family business shouldn’t be, and that is online.
The Memphis rapper’s sister, Victoria Woods, took to social media to air grievances about GloRilla allegedly not financially supporting the family enough, despite her success and fame.
There were reports that GloRilla bought her father a new car in 2025 to celebrate his retirement from the post office after 30 years, along with other gifts. Her mother states that she is well taken care of and worked at FedEx out of personal choice. But this still wasn’t enough for Woods.
GloRilla is 26 years old. She has shared her experiences of growing up in poverty with nine siblings, including living on air mattresses, sleeping in church pews, and staying in a hotel with her father. Despite these challenges, she has managed to rise above her circumstances and achieve a life beyond her wildest dreams.
But this is a symptom of a larger problem in Black communities that we need to name, and that is the Black tax, and the toxic expectation that your success automatically makes you responsible for everyone who shares your last name.
The Black tax isn’t just about helping family in genuine emergencies or investing in ventures that uplift everyone. It’s about the relentless, boundary-less demands that treat successful family members like ATMs with infinite withdrawals.
It’s the cousin who needs rent money every month. The uncle who always has a crisis right before you get paid. The relatives who track your success closer than your accountant does, calculating what you “should” be able to give them.
This expectation is often dressed up in language about loyalty, community, and not forgetting where you came from. But when you strip away the guilt-tripping, what you often find is exploitation.
I’ve watched this play out in my own family. My relatives came to America from Nigeria with dreams of education and opportunity. What they got was decades of working double shifts and multiple jobs, not primarily for themselves, but to send money back home.
The requests from relatives in Nigeria often had no boundaries. It didn’t matter what they earned, what responsibilities they had to their own spouses and children, or what their own struggles were in the U.S. “We’re suffering. Times are hard. Send money,” were just some things I always heard from them.
My relatives in the States are in their golden years, still working past retirement age. When I ask them if enforced boundaries would have made things easier for them, the answer is written in their exhaustion. They could have done so much more to position themselves to enjoy the fruits of their labor, rather than deal with the consequences of the Black tax.
What I learned from watching them is that this will not be my story. I’d rather help family members establish themselves than become their permanent financial support system.
I will help as long as it doesn’t derail my own plans and finances, because you cannot pour from an empty cup. Unfortunately, Wood exploited her family issues all for $2500.
UFC fighter Themba Gorimbo recently made headlines when he revealed he had to block family members and cut ties with relatives back in Zimbabwe. In a CNN Africa interview, Gorimbo explained that his family treated his UFC success like their personal jackpot.
The demands were constant and crushing. What started as helping became a weapon used to guilt him whenever he tried to set boundaries. Gorimbo said he now loves his family “from far.”
Your success is not a family debt to be collected. It’s yours. What you choose to share should come from generosity. And recognizing that isn’t selfish. It’s the first step toward breaking cycles that keep entire families stuck, waiting for someone else’s success to save them instead of building their own.
