Quotes from Vic Mensa

I fell off a bridge when I was, like, 17 years old and got electrocuted by 15,000 volts of electricity - fell 30 feet.

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.

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.

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

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

I started taking my mental health seriously, really working with a therapist and a psychiatrist.

I mean, Common was and is like my favorite rapper.

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.

You can't even tell, but a lot of the time your favourite rappers are wearing a bunch of fake jewellery.

I like the story about Bon Iver. They said he kept his GRAMMY in, like, the basement bathroom so he could just focus on getting another one. If I won a GRAMMY, I'd probably keep it at my mom's house on 47th Street.

I'd be on stage in Ireland performing for thousands of people and just not believing in what I'm doing at all. And it hurt, it hurt badly. I knew every day that I couldn't continue this way.

Service is key. And as I have more on my plate, and I have more ambitions and more goals and things I want for myself, I'm realizing more and more how important it is to be a servant.

That's one thing I can't lose: I can't lose the realness in my music.

I'd been doing my own thing, and making my own money; I wasn't built by a record label or the music industry, nor was I built by prominent artists that have given me co-signs.

I'm from a family of educators. I grew up with books in my house and in my hands and my parents in my life.

My brain's always working, and gears are turning 24/7. So I was trying to think of solutions.

I'm inspired by Prince on every level; the whole androgynous thing, the ambiguity in his gender and his foundation - it's amazing. That's the way I think about clothes, in relation to my personality and my life. It's just an extension of who I am, like a song.

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.

Being someone that grew up in a biracial household I never really felt accepted by black people when I was a little kid, I didn't feel fully accepted by black kids and I definitely didn't feel fully accepted by white kids cause I just felt like I could never be neither one.

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

I'm still alive to change the world and to do things that are significant. I don't know what they all may be, but I was put on this earth for a reason.

I think when your intent and your energy is authentic and it's real and it's of the moment and it's necessary, it will reach the people it needs to reach.

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.

LA is the only place where people know my name and still walk up to me and ask it. And I think that was really representative of a lot of the transplant people in LA. I just found everything so phoney.