Top 44 Vic Mensa Quotes

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.

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

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

But I love Chicago summers on Lake Michigan, Philly cheesesteaks on South Street, falling in love in Brooklyn, street fairs in Asheville, North Carolina.

Skateboarding was my introduction to rap and the first rap song that I really liked was KRS-One ‘Step Into A World.’

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

Human beings desire comfort and familiarity.

It’s anxiety that led to a depression that I’ve been dealing with since I was 16, 17. That was the first time I was ever prescribed medication for either of those disorders I guess you would call it.

You can live an entire lifetime in Chicago and not hear a gunshot, but if you go in a certain neighborhood then you can live your whole lifetime hearing gunshots all the time.

I just love The Cure. I think that their songwriting is so next level, and I really like the juxtaposition between this bad boy attitude and a softer, more emotional idea.

I don’t love America; I love people and places in America. How could I truly love an entity that views me as subhuman, that wrote in its constitution for me to be considered three-fifths of a person?

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.

Chicago is complicated and complex and very violent but also very rich with history and tradition and art and culture – it’s all these things.

I don’t see why clothes have to be women’s or men’s. It seems pretty limiting. I buy women’s pants, women’s shoes – everything, really.

We’re not able to hide behind myths of this being a post-racial society because Donald Trump has outlined exactly how a large portion of America feels.

There’s always somebody telling you what you’re not supposed to like. But that’s not the way I grew up.

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.

As an artist, I try not to sound the same as others. Or even as myself.

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

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.

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’ve been combing through the Wolverine archives and advertisements from the sixties and seventies. I’m looking to take inspiration from designs of the past and bring them into the future.

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.

I’m not motivated by money or fame. I’m more driven by the electricity of creativity. The idea of being one of the legends that inspired me, being like Tupac.

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.

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 have a responsibility to my fellow my community, to my fellow man, and woman. With that said, I create from a place of selfishness, but I’m also cognizant of potential impact on others. And I try to make that impact positive.

By nature I can be a confrontational person. I don’t feel like there’s anything wrong with that.

I never look at it as if any of my successes were given to me through fate. Getting record deals, making the songs I’ve made, having fans and working with the people I work with aren’t chance. I know that dedication and work have gotten me to where I am and will get me to where I wanna go.

Every time Emma Gonzalez speaks, I listen.

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.

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

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.

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 can remember being a young kid, twelve, thirteen years old just with my headphones on, on the train, listening to rappers paint these vivid pictures. Listening to Mobb Deep and feeling like I was in Queensbridge even though I’m on the Southside of Chicago.

Everyone’s life is for sale in America.

My foundation mainly works in Chicago, and the city needs a lot of help. I’m glad that was able to be incorporated into what I’m doing with Wolverine. It’s important to keep one foot firmly planted at home and try to benefit my people well.

I might have ‘couch syndrome.’ I’m always sleeping on the couch at home, even when I have a comfortable bed. I’m used to it.

I’ve been harassed by police my whole life and seen people who looked like me treated like animals at the hands of law enforcement.

From a musical standpoint, I was inspired by ’90s hip hop, with a lot of drums and the tempos. I’m always inspired by David Bowie and Prince.

So much of my life and my style and sensibility are influenced by skateboarding. It’s counter-culture and skateboarding is my introduction to counter-culture.

I was born in America. I don’t agree with 99.9 percent of the things America does around the world or at home, but I have no other home.

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.

No I.D. helped me to just identify certain energies that I might not have really represented yet in the music that he picked up on just in my personality, or in the person he perceived me to be.