Vic Mensa: The Chicago rap heavyweight talks new music, sobriety and Virgil

Chicago rapper Vic Mensa has plenty to talk about. With new music dropping along with a full-fledged studio effort, it’s only right he pulls through to dish on everything he’s remained busy with alongside Apple Music 1’s Zane Lowe.

Vic Mensa chops it up with Zane Lowe on everything from music to sobriety

In the Q&A, Mensa doesn’t hold back. While the entire interview is over on Apple Music 1, the growing digital giant’s PR team has come through with some solid quotes from the Q&A. Tap in.

Vic Mensa Tells Apple Music About New Song “LVLN UP”…

I wrote this one in Ghana, actually. I was using samples of an African music legend from Ghana, called Ebo Taylor, who was a contemporary of my Uncle as well as Shalewa Kuti. I was sampling his music on a long road trip in Ghana. And just in that trip, so much was happening. I was meeting the president of Ghana, just building clean water facilities for hundreds of people in large communities and turning the ideas of me in the popular zeitgeist completely on their head, and just transforming a moment in a time period of a lot of controversy and criticism for myself and others. And just dark cloud, synthesizing that, molding that cloud into something powerful and something beautiful. That was the real intent of the song and I'm just happy that I got to make a record like that on African music samples. That's what really excites me about it, because that's something that's such a big part of my story.

Vic Mensa Tells Apple Music About Celebrating Two Years of Sobriety and Shares His Advice To Anyone Struggling...

I think it feels like every day is a step in the right direction. And even if a day isn't, that I'm capable of redirecting my progression, my trajectory, my energy. And I was in a 12 step program actually, in 2018. That's like Alcoholics Anonymous for people that don't know, but it wasn't alcohol, it was another one. But something they say in those programs, it's like one day at a time. And once you start stacking one day to two days, to two weeks to two years, I just passed two years sober the other day. And I remember just at two months it felt like, "Damn, this is a lot. Can I keep doing this?" But two months, six months, and I see progress of any kind being that way. It's like once you really start to dedicate yourself to yourself and exclude the distractions, exclude the disturbances, the things that disturb the channel with God and the frequency, the signal, then I think things get clearer. But we live in this culture where it's so glorified, glamorized, and just normalized to mute all of our emotions and our feelings and our pain. And they say, "Oh, don't talk about your politics and don't discuss your mental health. That'll make you weak. Just take this, just drink that." But ultimately, all of our internal power as human beings, as God's children, man, is within us. So I would say to anybody that's going through it right now, yo, see what it looks like to try a day where you step away from the things that you're using to mask and hide your emotions. See what it looks like to try a week and see how far that'll take you.

Vic Mensa Tells Apple Music About His Song “Blue Eyes”…

I think that song really came from a place of deep personal reflection. And I definitely couldn't have written it in the past because I didn't have the life experience to even learn those things. I was telling you last time when we talked, that song came from an ayahuasca ceremony I did. And it was in that ceremony that I was asking, "Why do I feel so much pain?" And it came to me. It was like I used to want blue eyes, that is the root of my pain. That's not something I consciously remember, you know what I mean? But it was just being on a path of self-discovery and really committed to that, that will reveal things to you.

Vic Mensa Tells Apple Music About His Song “STRAWBERRY LOUIS VUITTON” (feat. Thundercat & Marta)…

I made that one sampling Virgil's Louis Vuitton film, the Amen Break — it’s named after one of the most famous breaks in hip hop, actually. He was on all types of joints, but it was featured in Saul Williams. Saul Williams is a good friend of mine, and just I believe one of the greatest poets on the planet. I was just captivated by this moment with a dude walking through the forest, wearing this strawberry colored Louis Vuitton sweater. I wrote it and I never imagined that I wasn't going to be able to play it for Virgil himself. But in his past and it really came to hold a significance to me as if he was memorialized or kept alive in my life through this song and through this moment of creativity that was inspired by the many shining lights of creativity that he gave us.