Vic Mensa On His Latest Album 'Victor,' Black Star Line Festival & More | Billboard News - video Dailymotion

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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!

Transcript

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)

Vic Mensa On His Latest Album 'Victor,' Black Star Line Festival & More | Billboard News

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