Vic Mensa
Vic Mensa

My purpose is to unite people, to bring us together. And above all, to be a champion for justice and a vehement opponent of oppression and justice.

Vic Mensa
Vic Mensa

No I.D. is like an alchemist and he'll only give you so much at one time. It's for the best at the end of the day, cause through the process of working with No I.D. I was able to soak up his perspective for songwriting and production and keeping music alive.

Vic Mensa
Vic Mensa

They say depression is just anger turned inward. Sometimes I turn it outwards, sometimes I turn it inward, but I know it's about self-worth.

Vic Mensa
Vic Mensa

Traffic' was an album that had a significant amount of songs. It was not complete and I felt didn't fully represent me as a person or as the artist I want to be and so when I started the writing process for 'The Autobiography' I was really turning a corner in my life.

Vic Mensa
Vic Mensa

I just thought I could broaden my impact and my reach by starting a non-profit and putting investment into our community.

Vic Mensa
Vic Mensa

Oftentimes I feel like I can, through the music, paint a picture of something that I can't look anywhere and see in my real life.

Vic Mensa
Vic Mensa

My body is what? Like 99 percent water or something. But I drink all of my water out of, like, plastic containers. You know what I mean? What is plastic? My body is not one percent plastic, but the way that I ingest the water that runs through all of my veins is almost strictly out of plastic. There's something wrong with that.

Vic Mensa
Vic Mensa

To be an American is to be indoctrinated with racism, violence, capitalism and manifest destiny, the principles upon which the land of the free was founded.

Vic Mensa
Vic Mensa

I'm never satisfied with anything. It can make things hard for myself, but it also pushes me.

Vic Mensa
Vic Mensa

Coming from Chicago, Lollapalooza is the one weekend of the summer when actual Chicagoans are kept out.

Vic Mensa
Vic Mensa

I think that everybody has their own interpretations of what it means to be American. But from my vantage point, being black and successful in the Unites States of America is the epitome of being American.

Vic Mensa
Vic Mensa

I never look at it as if any of my successes were given to me through fate. Getting record deals, making the songs I've made, having fans and working with the people I work with aren't chance. I know that dedication and work have gotten me to where I am and will get me to where I wanna go.

Vic Mensa
Vic Mensa

I'm one of the only people I know that often sleeps in boots.

Vic Mensa
Vic Mensa

We're not able to hide behind myths of this being a post-racial society because Donald Trump has outlined exactly how a large portion of America feels.

Vic Mensa
Vic Mensa

Wings' was my moment to free myself from everything that was destroying me.

Vic Mensa
Vic Mensa

The disparity between the haves and have-nots was always blatantly obvious to me, and it's that exact gap that drove me to start writing and pick up a pen. I wanted to explain and understand the world around me because it was easy to see it was corrupted.

Vic Mensa
Vic Mensa

That's something I can never lose: my love for the art of rap. As I grew older and became more interested in song writing, it just pushed my possibilities further. I always have to have a foot firmly on the floor as a rapper, because that's how I started.

Vic Mensa
Vic Mensa

I was raised by a woman and I'm the middle child of two sisters who are young Black women.

Vic Mensa
Vic Mensa

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.

Vic Mensa
Vic Mensa

It's anxiety that led to a depression that I've been dealing with since I was 16, 17. That was the first time I was ever prescribed medication for either of those disorders I guess you would call it.