Vic Mensa talks about his latest sophomore album 'Victor,' the Black Star line festival in Africa, working and collaborating with other artists like G-Eazy, Common and Chance the Rapper, his cannabis brand 93 Boyz special and more!
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00:00 broke out the sage. Oh of course. Or the Palo Santo and he's just like yeah so
00:06 what you thinking? What's up y'all I'm Vic Mensa and you're watching Billboard News.
00:13 It's Tetris with Billboard News. A lot of swag just hit the couch. What's up Vic?
00:22 How you doing man?
00:26 Let's talk about this music. You got your sophomore album coming and I feel like
00:41 your name has been around so long it's crazy that this is only your second
00:44 offering so tell me how's it feel to put your second piece of work out? I'm very
00:47 excited about it. It's really a story of redemption and triumph and spirituality
00:54 and love and pain and struggle human experience. That's the place I write from
01:00 that's what I aim to communicate and to convey and I'm just so excited to open
01:07 that conversation with any and everyone who listens to this album. You've got some
01:11 great collaborators. G-Eazy, Common, Ty Dolla Sign, Love Ty. So how do you go about
01:16 deciding who you want to bring onto a project? I think first and foremost it's
01:20 like the relationship as a human being as a man with those brothers in
01:25 particular like those are people that I have long-standing personal
01:29 relationships with so as I'm creating music and I hear a voice to do something
01:34 Common for example he's my favorite MC since being a little kid. When I made
01:39 this song called South Side Story that is featuring Common immediately I knew
01:44 it'd be crazy to have his voice on here and his paintbrush his texture. It had to
01:51 be crazy that be in the studio with Common right? Like were you geeking out a
01:53 little bit? I was definitely geeking out man. Yo Common came in the studio he's
01:56 sitting just like I'm sitting with you. He broke out the sage. Oh of course.
02:01 The sage and the joint of the energy. That's something I love a lot about him as an
02:07 artist it's like the intention in what he does you know it's a deeply spiritual
02:12 process. Let's talk about your intention you've said like this album isn't
02:16 necessarily political but it may lean that way because of how it's personal so
02:21 why do you think a lot of your personal opinions or vibe ends up leaning
02:24 towards the political spectrum? We often say that the personal is always
02:28 political the conditions that I exist in are inherently political and in that way
02:34 my personal story is a political story. On a base level the album is more about
02:39 me facing head on the things that I've been dealing with the things that
02:44 everybody's seen the things that nobody's seen being honest and vulnerable
02:48 about them giving context processing and transcending.
02:54 What do you think would shock your fans about this album?
03:02 Yes girls in the studio. This album has a couple of songs and that's not typically
03:09 the world I write in a lot of the time and so that's been a dope experience for
03:14 me too but I learned in the process of this album that the things we say have
03:20 such powerful magnetic frequency. The things that I'm saying in this album are
03:25 much more law of attraction like bringing to me the things I desire in my
03:32 life and whether that's love or being honest about the past and transparent
03:39 accountable and just real you know.
03:44 So now you have the second annual Black Star Line Festival you guys started in
03:51 Ghana now you're taking it to Jamaica so tell me why this festival means so much
03:54 to you why you want to do it again? Black Star Line Festival was just so dope in
03:58 its first year and really such a global experience of interconnected blackness
04:04 and acknowledgement and celebration of our history and our current realities
04:11 and our similarities with the Black Star Line Festival is showing you is that we
04:16 as black people on the globe as African people on the globe are really one
04:21 people and we're not African because we're born in Africa we're African
04:25 because Africa is born in us. I mean bringing the music home I love that
04:28 that's beautiful you got to work on it with a good friend of yours Chance the
04:31 Rapper yeah so tell me about you guys's relationship why do you think you guys
04:34 hit it off so good and how is it to work with him on so many great projects? I met
04:37 Chance when we were 14 both obsessed with hip-hop some of our first studio
04:41 sessions were together so we've been working and just being brothers since we
04:46 were little kids. In this modern moment our relationship has taken a new
04:51 dynamic in that our consciousness is in a new dynamic when I started to dive
04:57 into my roots in Africa and in Ghana and build out concepts for this bridge for
05:05 the diaspora Chance is the first person I called because he's in that same
05:10 mindset of unifying people. That's dope, love the brotherhood and a project I'm
05:16 excited to talk to you about it's 93 Boys Cannabis so tell me about the
05:19 cannabis brand and why you decided to do this. So 93 Boys I started as the first
05:23 black-owned cannabis brand to be sold legally in Illinois and that's an
05:28 amazing blessing at the same time it's so much work to be done because me
05:32 having a foot in the door although that enables me to bring people along with me
05:36 and that's the ethos of the brand that doesn't represent equity in a full scale
05:41 so we working towards that. Well I appreciate you coming to speak to us it
05:44 was glad to appreciate you Tetris.
05:48 (upbeat music)