A Look at Chance the Rapper and Vic Mensa's Relationship Over the Years

Over the weekend, Chance the Rapper officially deaded any linger issues between him and Vic Mensa by bringing Vic out during his headlining performance at Lollapalooza. It was timely, considering that Vic's album The Autobiography recently hit stores, but it was the culmination of a long-standing, mysterious friction between the two.

While they've never spoken publicly on what came between them, Vic and Chance's history is now a perfect arc. As a part of the "New Chicago" movement, Vic and Chance have been at the forefront of where hip-hop has been going (or trying to go), and have made sure that they put on for their city, even if their paths meant that the two drifted further apart.

With the Lollapalooza performance behind us, let's take a look at their history, which should help us understand why this moment in time is so momentous. 

~2012: Chance and Vic are members of Chicago's SaveMoney Crew

Chance and Vic's relationship begins with their involvement in the Chicago collective SaveMoney, which featured acts like Vic and Chance alongside Joey Purp, Towkio, and others. It wasn't a true imprint or anything, but definitely a dope collection of like-minded Chicago-based individuals. You can hear Chance and Vic being featured on the "SaveMoney Cypher" from Caleb James' 2012 release Ground Up.

April 3, 2012: Vic is a part of Chance's "Family"

With 10 Day being the project that introduced the world to Chance the Rapper, it's dope that Vic spit the first 16 on "Family." To make things even tighter between the two, you can see them cracking jokes seated next to each other in the video. Like Sulaiman said, the team work makes the dream work.

April 30, 2013: Vic links with Chance on "Cocoa Butter Kisses"

About a year later, Chance dropped his critically-acclaimed mixtape Acid Rap, which featured the Vic Mensa and Twista-featured "Cocoa Butter Kisses." The cut turned into a dope look at Chicago's past and future aligning for one gem on a beautiful release.

Sept. 30, 2013: Chance returns the favor on Vic's "Tweakin'"

Months later, Vic released INNANETAPE, and got Chance to drop the third verse on the bugged-out lyrical exercise known as "Tweakin'." For what it's worth, there'd been questions about which Chi-Town spitter was better for a while based on the two of them hitting the world around the same time. We won't have that debate today, but we could take convincing arguments for either side.

May 5, 2014: Chance and Vic go hard in XXL Freshman cover cypher

To the surprise of no one paying attention to the world of hip-hop at the time, both Chance and Vic were featured on the 2014 XXL Freshman cover. They even got to kick lyrics in one of the Freshman cyphers from that year.

June 6, 2016: Vic Mensa blacks Chance out of a pic on the 'gram

During his NYC celebration for turning 23, Vic lived it up, and some awesome shots of Vic alongside Chance, Jay Z, and Beyoncé hit the internet, including Vic's own Twitter page.

What's wild is that the same photo (with the same caption) made its way to Instagram, but with Chance the Rapper being totally blacked out. And while Malik Yusef said there was "no beef," the internet stayed speculating on what this actually meant.

June 11, 2016: Was that a Chance shot, Vic?

Less than a week later, Vic dropped a "SaveMoney Summer" freestyle for the L.A. Leakers which featured some lines that some took as subs at Chance, but with no real background on the story, it's hard to say.

The timing was intriguing, and pointed directly to Vic having some issue with Chance. With Chance's star continuing to rise at the time, maybe he's the person that Vic "used to be cool with" that was on some "Stephen Colbert" shit.

June 15, 2016: Vic on Chance friction: "Competition is healthy"

While not addressing specifically what beef he might have with Chance, Vic didn't shy away from speaking on the rumors of his friction with Chance during a conversation on Real 92.3. He said that "competition is healthy" when asked if he felt like he was competing with Chance, but then broke down that it wasn't beef persay: "I know beef can get all complicated and things get twisted up here, but I really pride myself on, my entire life, having been a real straight up dude to everybody around me... I don’t do my people dirty. If somebody was wanting to beef with me, they wouldn’t have all that much ammo. They would have to start digging and making things up, ’cause i just keep it really, really, really real with my guys. The people that I move with and do business with, they would testify that I'm 100 with mine."

Healthy competition, especially in the game of rap, is a given, but is that why a blacked-out Chance was on Vic's IG? He wasn't saying.

July 27, 2017: Did Vic have bars for Chance that he left off The Autobiography?

During the promo run for Vic's album The Autobiography, Vic visited Big Boy's Neighborhood and told Big Boy that Jay Z asked Vic to remove a diss to an unnamed rapper that he had on it previously. "You know it’s funny," Vic began. "There was a situation where I had a line that was kind of dissing somebody else and it wasn’t really necessary and I just wanted it ’cause it was a good bar."

He continued: “I took it off and I actually… I didn’t wanna take it off, at all. I played it for him and he didn’t really say to take it off at all, and later on he hit me thinking about it and said ‘I think you should take it off of there for this reason.'”

Now, the question is, who was Vic dissing? While many thought it was shots at Lil Yachty based on some shots Vic threw during a live performance of "OMG," one has to wonder if Vic was aiming at Chance, and Hov didn't want Vic to further escalate a feud between the Chi-Town spitters.

July 31, 2017: Vic says he and Chance have "been talking"

Shouts to The Breakfast Club for always getting to the heart of beef. During another interview on his Autobiography run, Vic let the world know that he and Chance had "been talking." 

"I feel like that's also a part of my journey," Vic continued, "putting this positive energy into the world. Chance is my brother. We grew up together. If you have a brother, if you've ever had a brother, you know brothers fight, man. That happens. Especially growing up and everybody is there to watch it. That's what I'm unpacking in this album, so many situations that were hectic and toxic, as life can be sometimes... We ain't supposed to beef. The city needs us to be unified. That’s the place that I'm at."

So without getting into what these two may have been fighting about, Vic let it be known that he and Chance were past whatever "beef" was going down. Clearly something was afoot, as on the 17th of July, Chance shouted Vic out on his Instagram during some friendly promotion of The Autobiography. 

"Me & Vic met at a high school open mic when we were 14," Chance began. "We've been on this journey for along time. This is much bigger than a moment THIS IS MY BROTHERS DEBUT ALBUM. I've decided I'm waiting til it drops to listen. I've been through a lot with him but I want to hear it told in his words."

Aug. 5, 2017: Chance brings out Vic during his Lollapalooza set

If you had a chance (pun intended) to see Chance the Rapper and Vic Mensa to reunite, what better town than Chicago? During Chance's performance, he made sure to throw on the aforementioned "Cocoa Butter Kisses" so Vic could get some mic time in, then had Vic performThe Autobiography cut "Didn't I" for the crowd.

If these two Chicago-based brothers were beefing, their moment at Lollapalooza 2017 was a step in the right direction for their relationship, and for the city at large. Hopefully this means that some new material with Chance and Vic is on the way. Fingers crossed.