Hey, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, Internet's busiest music nerd. I hope you're doing well. We're only a few days into this year, and it's already starting off insane.

This story involves one of the most legendary trap artists of all time. That would be one Waka Flocka Flame. I mean, just last year on the main channel, I did a classic review of his breakout album, Flockaveli, which between his vocals and the amazing hard-hitting production of Lex Luger, they together made one of the most explosive hard-hitting trap albums of all time that honestly helped put the genre on the map and form it into what it is today.

Now, truth be told, Waka has not had quite as much commercial success in the wake of that record, unfortunately, even if he has had some other solid releases put under his belt since that album. I feel like without a buzzing music career to preoccupy him, a lot of his social media activity has gotten weirder and weirder. Not too long ago, he went full MAGA and essentially came out as a Trump supporter.

Now we have this story over here on theneedledrop.com – Waka Flocka Flame pretends he got jumped to prove how fake news spreads. Shout out to Dylan for getting it up.

This morning, stories on social media started circulating with a hefty dose of both concern and speculation after rapper Waka Flocka Flame posted a photo on Threads showing his face bruised and battered with the caption claiming he had been attacked by 10 men in a violent altercation.

Here's the picture that Waka Flocka himself posted. Multiple news outlets then went on to post stories about it. And in response, Waka Flocka Flame essentially comes out and says, 'Hey, I lied' in some kind of attempt at a gotcha.

"Not a single media outlet that reported on my shit reached out to me or my team to confirm anything.... they ran with a caption as they headline. Imagine a world where facts ain't checked and a igpost can steer a string of #news."

Okay, I'm proud of you for your gotcha and everything, but let me say this, and forewarning, I'm going to get a little loud here, but you can't get mad at fake news when YOU ARE THE ONE WHO SPREAD THE FAKE NEWS! Not only that, but you publicly did it on your own account using your own face!

Look, I mean, it is true – journalists, generally speaking, should have due diligence when it comes to posting stories and thorough research. I feel like that's something we all generally agree with, and we didn't need Waka Flocka Flame to come out and do this in order to prove that point. That's a pretty uncontroversial take.

But the thing is, if this is something you were really trying to get people to realize and understand, wouldn't you, I don't know, have this news passed through a proxy or something like that? Somebody who isn't you?

Weird take here, I know, but people, generally speaking, tend to presume the person posting from a verified social media account attached to a public figure, is that public figure posting and making a statement. Sure, accounts get hacked here and there, but simultaneously, you also posted a picture of your beat-up face.

Again, I could understand this argument if Waka Flocka had this started through a popular account or something like that, and then nobody did the legwork to verify whether or not it was actually true. Okay, I get that. But in this case, in the case that you created, the person who got beat up is also the source of the information of the beating. And you further sealed the deal again with a very believable photo.

At the end of the day, I don't feel like this is so much a story about fake news as much as it's a story about a guy lying. If, hypothetically, one of these news organizations did reach out to you, what were you going to do? Just be like, 'Oh, no, actually, I didn't get beat up. I lied.' At that point, what reason would that publication, or even all of us watching this video and me making this video right now, for what reason should we believe you at this point?

Even now, what if you did actually get beat up? And I don't know, you're just lying about not getting beat up now? How deep does this flocka-ception run? I mean, I would reach out to Waka Flocka Flame over a DM on Instagram or something at this point, and I considered doing so. But the thing is, I wouldn't know what to believe regardless of what his answer would be. What is the origin of this photo? Is this picture actually from a beating? Did you get a really good makeup job here done?

Again, I agree with the sentiment that news organizations should be putting in more effort to check their facts and everything like that. And I'm glad that my site didn't run with the story immediately when news of this came out. But at the end of the day, this wasn't just like some random unsubstantiated rumor that came out of nowhere and people just believed with no verification whatsoever. This is information, true or not, that came from you. You are the guy. You are the authority on whether or not you get beat up. And you told us with your own thumbs on your own social media that you got beat up and people believed it.

So at the end of the day, I feel like all Waka Flocka Flame has done here is not undermine our trust in the news media, but more just undermine our trust in him. How do we know if anything he's saying is on the level past this point, if he's willing to lie about whether or not he's gotten the shit beat out of him?

But yeah, 2025 is starting off weird. Let me know what you guys think about this down in the comments. Shout out once again to Dylan and theneedledrop.com.

Anthony Fantano. Waka Flocka. Forever.