A lot of the most prolific painters died broke and weren't appreciated in their time. I'm trying to remember who exactly I was thinking of - like Rembrandt, van Gogh or Gauguin. Some of those guys, they got whole floors of museums to themselves but weren't really appreciated in their time at all.

Vic Mensa

Categorized in : Thinking Trying Remember Time

We've got a lot of love from Chicago, you know we've been selling out big venues in Chicago that other people don't sell out. Our music is something that's a bit different you know from what's being publicized and that's going against everything else coming out in Chicago.

Vic Mensa

selling different people

As an artist, I try not to sound the same as others. Or even as myself. It's a constant, flowing web of influence. And information. And retweets.

Vic Mensa

influence artist trying

I download music everyday, I know music is free and so does everybody else you know.

Vic Mensa

music-is everyday

I wanted to wear this Confederate flag dress as a middle finger to a symbol of racism, 3 Years Sober.

Vic Mensa

entertainment

You can go into a psychiatrist sometimes and just feel that this person's only role and their only desire is to write you a prescription, get a check and send you out the door.

Vic Mensa

door feel you sometimes

Hip-hop has always been speaking about the way your brain is manipulated by stress and struggle because hip-hop is borne from struggle.

Vic Mensa

stress struggle brain way

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

you body water way

Thinking about the artists I've loved through the years, my favorites are the ones who've made music with cultural, societal and political significance.

Vic Mensa

loved music political thinking

The Clash is pretty much my favorite band, and their songs like 'Rock the Casbah' are political dance tracks.

Vic Mensa

rock band political dance

I came from a two-parent household and my father is a PhD from west Africa, but at the same time I grew up five blocks from where Obama lived and five blocks from the projects.

Vic Mensa

same africa time father

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

pen understand me world

People think I'm angry and they're right. There's a lot to be angry about. But I'm also empathetic and ambitious and hopeful and happy at times.

Vic Mensa

think angry happy people

Chicago, I feel, is a microcosm for the segregated, violent environment that is America. I try to not only speak about these things in music, but also try to address these things in real life tangibly with action.

Vic Mensa

feel music speak life

I collaborated with so many people from Chicago - so many Black people, young Black women organizations like BYP100 and Assata's Daughters. Just being out there, I saw what a community mobilizing can accomplish in terms of freedom and how music and my words in my music can play a significant part in that.

Vic Mensa

women music freedom people

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

know anger depression sometimes

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

Vic Mensa

woman child women black

My mother was from upstate New York; she's of Irish and German descent. My father was from Ghana.

Vic Mensa

she new mother father

I think first of all my purpose is to be me. I didn't come here to specifically be a role model or anything.

Vic Mensa

role-model think me purpose

I feel that my purpose is to shed light on some of the darker sides of our world, and to lend a hand and a voice to people struggling.

Vic Mensa

feel light people world

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

picture look music life