How Rap Phenom Vic Mensa Cheated Death and Charmed Kanye
As a teenager, Vic Mensa nearly died twice. Fifteen thousand volts of electricity shot through him after he fell off a 30-foot bridge while sneaking into Lollapalooza. The day after he spent three nights in a hospital, he flew to New York City for a meeting with Atlantic Records.
Two years later, he drove home after a long night in the studio. A wheel on his mom’s car hit a pole on the expressway, causing the vehicle to spin out, leaving it totaled. “Those are the reasons why I got ‘Still Alive’ tattooed on my stomach. I say that knowing it’s not a coincidence that I’m still alive. 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.”
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At 22, Mensa is living a young rapper’s fantasy. Backed by the most famous hip-hop moguls alive, Kanye West and Jay Z, and grounded by indie credibility, Mensa has had the distinct joy of both gaining international success and acclaim, and seeing his friends — like Chance the Rapper and the rest of the Savemoney crew — rise as well.
A performance of the melancholy “Wolves” at the SNL 40 special alongside West and Sia exposed Mensa to an audience beyond hip-hop heads and Chicagoans. His video for “U Mad,” another collaboration with West, has racked up 7 million views on YouTube, and he’s found an entry into the world of EDM thanks to the Skrillex-assisted “No Chill.”
When performing live, Mensa spews quick-witted, fast-paced rhymes, whipping himself across the stage in a blast of excitement and rage. But over the phone, on his way to Montreal for a show, he speaks slowly about his childhood and success, carefully choosing each word. “I believe that everything happens for a reason,” he says earnestly. “[Meeting Jay Z] was definitely a moment where I felt like certain stars were aligning, and I was in the right place. Even working with Kanye West has been one of those moments. I think the fact that I met the people that I met that formed Savemoney were things that happened for a reason. We didn’t meet as a rap group; we just met as pure friends. Most people’s friends can’t rap like that.”
Mensa, like the rest of Savemoney and his mentor, Kanye West, grew up on Chicago’s South Side. “I was, in a lot of ways, cut from a similar cloth,” he says of his similarities with West. “My parents are educators, but I fucked around in the streets. I grew up on the same streets that [he] rapped about, and he was fresh. I could just relate heavily. When I started writing my own raps, I started writing shit that people could relate heavily to.”
In his Hyde Park neighborhood, Mensa found freedom in street culture. Comparing himself to Lee Quiñones from Wild Style, he describes how he was drawn to skateboarding and graffiti as a child. “I still have a skater mentality,” he reflects. “We always had to break into skate spots, just to have fun. I feel like my success with this music shit is like, ‘To do it our way, we always have to jump the fence.’ Graffiti influences all the art that I make [as well as] my rebel mentality.”