Vic Mensa recently graced the stage at his hometown festival, Lollapalooza, where he took the opportunity to debut two new records. He's following up the performance with a new interview with Phoenix New Times, where he speaks on his recent EP There's A Lot Going On, drugs and more.
In the interview, Vic opens up about a particular lyric that appears on There's A Lot Going On. On the EP's title track, Vic raps, "I did acid in the studio one day and almost killed myself." Vic provides more narrative to this lyric, saying,
"So what happened there was, I was in a point of time since probably 2013 where I jumped from drug to drug as, like, a creative crutch. It was really like a handicap, but I got to a point where I just felt like I needed drugs to write, to be creative, and thought it was psychedelic drugs. I did too much mushrooms, to the point where I couldn't even do it anymore, I would just have a bad trip. So this was sometime after that. But I was in the studio with some of my friends and we did acid and we started buggin' out, somehow things just took a really negative turn. I just felt really low and at the bottom of it, and I was on the ground trying to sink into the floor. Then I went outside and I went to my car. It was near Halloween and I had this toy pistol in my trunk, it was part of my costume. And I'm just glad it wasn't a real pistol. I was just thinking about bridges and all that suicidal shit. It scarred me for a while. I was definitely dealing with that bad trip for at least a year."
He also talks on whether or not the EP indicates his album direction. "There are definitely parallels sonically and lyrically," Vic says. "The album, though, draws a lot more from that last song "There's Alot Going On" and kinda expands into just really personal stories about my life. So there's definitely social parallels in there, but it deals more with very personal experiences than it does with political issues. But like I said, they still exist in there."
He also confirms his debut album will no longer be titled Traffic. "Something entirely new," he says. He also gives his two cents on Kanye West cutting his part from "Wolves" on TLOP, "I thought it was wack. I just didn't think the song was as good. Everybody told him he was tweaking with that. But I just talked to Ye recently, and that's big bro. He's also one of my biggest influences."
Check out the full interview here.