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.
Vic Mensa
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.
So whether that's taking a bunch of people from Chicago down to Standing Rock or being in Flint, Michigan, or being in Palestine or Baton Rouge after Alton Sterling's killing, I've been trying to, just as a man, be present and stand with the struggling and oppressed people around the world.
My brain's always working, and gears are turning 24/7. So I was trying to think of solutions.
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 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.
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.
But I think your biggest crime as a citizen of society or America or the world is to be ignorant by choice. There's no excuse for that. I feel, when the information is at my fingertips, I could never choose to be ignorant.
I just like Kodak Black. I feel like he's pretty self-aware, even if I don't agree with all the things he says.
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.
I'm from Chicago and that's where I created all of my most prized possesions, which are my songs.
I started taking my mental health seriously, really working with a therapist and a psychiatrist.
I used to print out lyrics from Nas songs and write my own lyrics in the same syllable count but with different words and different rhymes.
I just thought I could broaden my impact and my reach by starting a non-profit and putting investment into our community.
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.
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.
Wings' was my moment to free myself from everything that was destroying me.
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 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.
I'm one of the only people I know that often sleeps in boots.
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.
To be an American is to be indoctrinated with racism, violence, capitalism and manifest destiny, the principles upon which the land of the free was founded.
There's always somebody telling you what you're not supposed to like. But that's not the way I grew up.
Skateboarding was my introduction to rap and the first rap song that I really liked was KRS-One 'Step Into A World.'
But I love Chicago summers on Lake Michigan, Philly cheesesteaks on South Street, falling in love in Brooklyn, street fairs in Asheville, North Carolina.
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.
I think that everybody has their own interpretations of what it means to be American. But from my vantage point, being black and successful in the Unites States of America is the epitome of being American.
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.
The things I have to say on and off the record are important, and I say them because I want to be heard.
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.
I love putting in work for the city that raised me with my foundation SaveMoneySaveLife, and putting resources into the streets of Chicago.
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.
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.
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.
I really make music from the heart.
No I.D. is like an alchemist and he'll only give you so much at one time. It's for the best at the end of the day, cause through the process of working with No I.D. I was able to soak up his perspective for songwriting and production and keeping music alive.
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.
My purpose is to unite people, to bring us together. And above all, to be a champion for justice and a vehement opponent of oppression and justice.
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.
Nirvana is my favourite band.
My mother was from upstate New York; she's of Irish and German descent. My father was from Ghana.
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.
And being that my father is gone in immigrant and I have you know - that I owe my existence to immigration, I think that the fear of immigration that has existed in American history from the first day, I just find it to be wrong.
Because many people deny the Palestinian struggle. They deny them everything. They deny them humanity, they deny them the right to be on the land they were born in. They deny them the right to return to the homes that were stolen from them, to build Israel.
The Clash is pretty much my favorite band, and their songs like 'Rock the Casbah' are political dance tracks.
I was raised by a woman and I'm the middle child of two sisters who are young Black women.
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.
Hip-hop has always been speaking about the way your brain is manipulated by stress and struggle because hip-hop is borne from struggle.
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.
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.
