Still learning about what fuels Vic Mensa and his style? Look no further than what he had to say pulling up to Apple Music 1’s Ebro Darden to dish on everything from his new Victor album and sobriety to what key influences help him push forward.

Vic Mensa unloads and talks everything with Apple Music

From dishing on the late fashion icon Virgil Abloh to his new album’s artwork, it’s all big moments for Mensa. Peep some of the highlighted moments from the interview and head over to Apple Music for the full-fledged episode.

Vic Mensa on Getting Sober…
I definitely have a different sense of clarity and a different sense of focus than I've ever had before. And I think a lot of that came from sobriety for real. And so I'm two years sober, I just passed that milestone about a week ago. Alcohol, and weed, and pills, and all that type of s**t. I started practicing Islam in that same point in time. And above all, I made a decision to cut out all the shit in my life that was not actively serving a purpose, not actively bringing me towards my goals. And I come to realize that a lot of those things that created issues in my life were just ways of running from something, ways of masking some emotion, or hiding some insecurity, forgetting about it for a few minutes. And facing fear though is what takes you to another level.
Vic Mensa on Being Inspired by One of Virgil Abloh’s Last Videos While Making His Song “Strawberry Louis Vuitton”…
I was sampling a Virgil film when I made Strawberry Louis Vuitton. It was one of Virgil's last films, Louis Vuitton films. It's called Amen Break. It's like one of the most famous breaks in Hip-hop too, and it was featuring Saul Williams. And so I'm like, "Saul Williams on a Louis Vuitton Virgil film. I'm dialed in." And in Ableton, man, when you bring a video into it it keeps replaying the same piece as you play the audio. So I'm just looking at it and there's this dude during that part of the music wearing a bright red Louis Vuitton sweater with the hood up in the woods, and that's really what a strawberry Lou Vuitton thing came from, just chopping up the beat.

Vic Mensa Says The ‘Victor’ Album Artwork is a Life-Size Painting He Had Commissioned…
Yeah, it's massive. It's like six feet. The artist is named Terron Cooper Sorrells. He's from Virginia, but he paints out of Chicago. I had this concept of the story of Osiris. One of my big homies, shout out to Suave. He's currently locked up in Illinois, been locked up since the '90s, but he's one of the most brilliant people I've ever met. His intellect, his wealth of knowledge is so vast, so expansive. He introduced me to a lot of Egyptian mythology. Specifically, the Egyptian Book of the Dead. He was just telling me, "You need to tap in with this." I remember seeing it on a Tupac reading list. And so, I went, dove into it and I learned about the story of Osiris. Osiris was 28 years old when he was lured into his own sarcophagus by his brother. And once he got in there, they ripped his body to pieces, spread his limbs all across the planet. And then, he was sewed back together by Isis and he came to be the God of the afterlife. I was 28 reading that and I was like, "I got to use this for my album." You know what I mean? It's too hard. It's my favorite album cover I've ever done.

Vic Mensa on How His Aunt Skin Cancer Diagnosis Inspired His Song “Blue Eyes”…
The song “Blue Eyes,” where I'm dissecting the impacts of European beauty standards on myself and my family. That's one of my favorite songs that I've done. And I started making it so long ago, man. I started making that song in 2016 and I was doing ayahuasca for the first time. And I had this higher voice come to me and it was like, I used to want blue eyes, that is the root of my pain. And I was like, "I got to put that in a song." But it made sense, I didn't remember that. But having a white mother and just being different from her and my father, it made sense. And I started writing a song, but it wasn't until I learned that my aunt had been diagnosed with skin cancer directly related to a history of skin bleaching that the rest of the song came to me. Learning that, that was heavy for me because it's so much bigger than her or our family. It's painful to think that our people have been misled so deeply to believe that they should try to wash away the melanin in their skin in order to achieve some unattainable, unrealistic idea of beauty that's been brainwashed into us. And that would be the same thing that could ultimately kill you.