Vic Mensa gets emotional during conversation with Chance the Rapper over friendship fallouts
TheGrio...
A conversation about past slights brought the “Down On My Luck” rapper to tears when he recalled his hurt over Chance’s decision not to bring him on tour.
A conversation between Vic Mensa and Chance the Rapper about friendship, fame, and fallouts brought Mensa to tears at one point.
Premiering his new podcast, “The Vic Mensa Show,” on Wednesday, Aug. 26, Mensa had his fellow Chicago artist as a guest on the first episode, and the two go into some of the deep, unresolved pain in their friendship.
Vic Mensa and Chance the Rapper have known each other since they were teenagers. The two met as 14-year-olds at an open-mic night-turned talent show, where both were slotted to perform rap and poetry. From there, the two became collaborators on tracks like “Coco Butter Kisses,” “Family,” and “Tweakin’,” and when Mensa formed the collective SaveMoney, Chance joined him.
But as Chance started ascending faster in the rap game, things fell apart between him and Mensa.
“Coming into success, coming into fame, coming into money young… and addicted to drugs. Emotionally unstable,” Mensa said. “I feel like I always had an emotional instability, which I’m sure has fueled a lot of creativity, but that coupled with the intense rivalry of our creative process and seeing you in so much success, it grew jealousy in me.”
As the two put it, they’ve fallen out a million times over the course of their friendship, but there was one moment in particular where Chance apologized during their conversation in the episode that made Mensa emotional.
As Chance tells the story, around the time he released his mixtape “Acid Rap,” which built on the momentum of his first mixtape “10 Day” and landed him on the Billboard US Top R&B/Hip Hop Albums and US Heatseekers lists, with notable features from Mensa, Childish Gambino, Saba, Noname, Ab-Soul, and more. But when he had the opportunity to lift Mensa up and take him on tour as an opener, he decided not to.
“I was like, ‘No,’” he said. “And I said at the time that I didn’t want to do it because I’m like, Vic’s not opening for me, we at the same level; he doesn’t need to be opening. But in reality, I was like, I don’t want to have to split this. I don’t want to have to share the stage at this point. And that was definitely bogus.”
Mensa broke down, recalling the moment from his perspective.
“That one hurt me bad,” he said, tearfully. “Cause it was like, you was having money, bro. I remember that time, I was back living with my parents, and I was flipping the cushions on the couch, man, lookin for quarters and s–t. And when you didn’t want me to come on that tour, I was f—-d up for real. Obviously my parents have a home, and I have a real family, but I was hurt cuz I was like d–n, I’m taking shit out my sister’s piggy bank.”
Mensa continued, saying that Chance’s decision ultimately taught him an important lesson.
“What I had to come to was: I want you to win, with or without me. And that was a science that took so much experience for me to understand holistically, as a man, as a human being, he said. “That the desire or the need for reciprocity from something is not necessarily conducive to the benefit that you get from giving.”
Chance also commended Mensa’s friendship throughout the years, saying that when his life was falling apart in 2020, and he wanted to use music as an outlet, his father told him to reach out to Mensa.
“He was like, ‘You have to call your brother. You have to call Vic.’ And so I called you and I told you what I was going through. I probably cried,” he said.
He continued saying that he and Mensa later went to dinner with a group, where Chance told everyone he wanted to work on a new project, and he needed help. He said Vic made him realize that the two of them “care about each other’s success in a way that’s not just defending each other from the world,” but wanting each other to succeed.
Maybe two or three of those people at that dinner came up, but the person that showed up every time was you,” Chance said. “And even when I wasn’t calling you, you was hitting me up and saying, ‘Where we at with this?’”