Interview: Vic Mensa On "The Autobiography", The Death Of Flexing, & Rappers Getting Political

The Chicago rapper talks with Complex AU about the journey that birthed his latest project.

Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images
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LOS ANGELES, CA - JULY 13: Vic Mensa performs onstage after he is indroduced by Jay-Z at Mack Sennett Studios on July 13, 2017 in Los Angeles, California.

Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images

Vic Mensa’s The Autobiography is so much more than just a summary of experience. It’s a statement about where he is right now, the pain that he’s been through – and most importantly, that the creation of this magnum opus has been a huge part of his healing process. “This album was like a major catharsis,” the 24-year-old says. “I was able to unpack so many of my life experiences–good, bad and everything in between–and make assessments and analyse them in a way that helped, and continues to help me learn from the past, in pursuit of a more informed and positive future.”

It’s a remarkably level-headed response from someone whose life was arguably in disarray for the better part of the last four years, having admittedly jumped from drug to drug to inspire his creativity since 2013. But at the beginning of last year, he got clean. He scrapped the album he was working on called Traffic, full of music he realised no longer represented himself, and started work on a new album – one about his personal growth, and what inspired it.    

That’s what makes the release of this album such a relief. Vic always knew who he was supposed to be, and The Autobiography is his chance to finally show that to everyone else. “I've known the calibre of artist that I am just with the pen, purely from a lyrical standpoint,” Vic says. “I really really studied and put that 10,000 hours in early. So I've known the calibre of writer that I am for a long time, but I feel like just now a lot of people are starting to see that.”

The rapper has always had something to prove. Constantly on the periphery of being named in the same breath as the Kendricks, J. Coles and Drakes, one could argue that Vic has been let down by a lack of focus in the past – but not this time around. “The storytelling was really me just trying to take a bird's eye view and I tried to actually keep my head down in the perspective, in the journey,” he says. Vic made a point to avoid as many hip-hop tropes as possible too, and to demonstrate just how good he is at this rap shit using the music alone – to show, rather than to tell.

“Very often a part of rap is that arrogance and boasting,” he says. “Money, and how many bitches you got. And what kind of cars you drive.” That just simply wasn’t the lyrical content he wanted to discuss: “I wanted to leave those completely outside of my process because I felt that it couldn't be The Autobiography in a real way if I was focusing too much on things that didn't mean all that much to me,” he says.

Instead, he focused his attention on becoming the artist he felt like he needed in his own darkest moments. He relays a story about dealing with some heavy personal issues in autumn last year, and needing to find the music that could speak to him in a real moment of struggle. “I felt in too deep, and I felt like maybe there was little hope for me,” Vic says. His favourite rappers, that he’d turn to time and time again simply weren’t cutting it. Kanye & Jay-Z brought some bits and pieces of introspection, but Vic was looking for music absent of what he calls “materialistic flex”.

Vic says that he ended up listening to Nirvana, and 2Pac’s Me Against The World on loop. “You know, [Pac said something] like ‘every dark day has a bright morning after it, stick your chest up and handle it’, and that song was one of the only rap songs in the moment when I was trying to find something, that was really speaking to me,” he says. It’s only natural that the music that came out of him after this moment was similarly free of flex. “I wanted to go to a place with my first album that was just to the root, to the heart of emotion, and just unbridled by anything that wasn't truly in my heart.”               

Vic’s decision to follow these ideals led to the creation of The Autobiography – a traditional, tight, deftly considered album, navigating a sea of bloated projects that only set out with the hope that one of their twenty plus songs sticks as a single. The storytelling on the project intentionally harkens back to the works of Nas, Common, Eminem and Mobb Deep. “I can remember being a young kid, twelve, thirteen years old just with my headphones on, on the train, listening to rappers paint these vivid pictures,” he says. “Listening to Mobb Deep and feeling like I was in Queensbridge even though I'm on the Southside of Chicago.” Vic’s appreciation of that artform made him want to create his own version of those chapters. “I wanted to do that with my own life and my own experiences for a kid listening to my shit right now. I want to be able to put him into a world where he feels like he's on the Southside of Chicago.”

The honesty that bleeds from the album certainly has a lot in common with the latest project from his mentor, Jay-Z, and you can partially put it down to Chicago super-producer No I.D.’s involvement in both projects. While No I.D. admits to having created certain beats to draw subject matter out of Jay–the use of the sample on the titular “4:44” was intended to force his hand and make him talk about his infidelities–his role was different on Vic’s project.

“No I.D. helped me to just identify certain energies that I might not have really represented yet in the music that he picked up on just in my personality, or in the person he perceived me to be,” he says. He explains that No I.D. was able to tell him exactly what the album was missing, what had been covered, and what there was too much of. “[He played] devil's advocate to think from every angle about what the body of work as a whole represented.”

Beyond the thought processes of the album, the heart of it deals with the fact that this is a second chance for Vic, when all might have been lost. And aside from his role as an artist, he’s becoming known for taking the time to speak on topics that other rappers simply won’t touch for fear of losing face. He’s been brave about admitting that he needed therapy to deal with mental health issues, and few artists would be willing to admit the same. But it was part of his journey to come to terms with his own issues and confront them – and he’s happy with the consequences of sharing that. “With that in consideration, I was also very aware that by doing so I would have the potential to inspire other people to confront their own issues and be honest and be transparent, and be real about it,” he says.

And in light of recent events, with figures like Donald Trump's denouncing transgender people in the military, and refusing to call the recent Charlottesville killer a “white supremacist” or “terrorist”, Vic thinks it’s about time that artists were more bold about what’s going on in their minds. “Donald Trump is just ostracising and dividing people and the world's political climate right now is really in shambles, and I think that this is a moment at which people with a voice and with a platform can't afford to be subordinate and docile,” he says. When I ask whether he thinks rappers are doing enough with their platforms to better the lives of their people, he takes a pause. “You know I usually have a different answer to that question,” he says. “I usually say people should do what they feel comfortable doing and what they know about. But honestly, I feel like at this point enough is enough.”

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