Vic Mensa's musical output has altered radically and suddenly in recent years, evolving from a craft based in self-destruction to an art of healing. 

The Chicago rapper's  life — which had been dogged by depression, violence and unrestrained chaos — came to an abrupt crash several years ago. Mensa tells GRAMMY.com that he fell asleep at the wheel while driving a Range Rover back from the studio, totalling the vehicle. He miraculously left the road unscathed, and swore himself to sobriety as a mark of his good fortune. 

Ever since, Mensa has decided to live conscientiously, tapping into divinity, and departing his path of destruction towards one of love. 

His new album Victor, out Sept. 15, is a document of that growth. It’s liberatory in sound and spirit, an ode to the victories Mensa has made in his own life and through his enormously impactful community work. Victor also boasts a broad swathe of musical influences — from house and punk to Afrobeat and funk — and features collaborations with Common and Ty Dolla $ign. 

That Victor is his first album in six years would be a big accomplishment, but it's already been a huge year for Mensa. In January, he and Chance the Rapper put on a free festival in Ghana which drew 52,000 attendees, as part of their effort to broaden the cultural exchange between the African and American rap scenes. He continued to grow his 93 Boyz business (Illinois' first Black-owned cannabis brand), which uses its profits for social initiatives including Mensa’s Books Before Bars program that distributes books to prisoners.

GRAMMY.com caught up with Mensa in the midst of this victorious year, just before he headed back to the studio once again.

You’ve been performing recently with your longtime friend and collaborator Chance the Rapper for his 10 year Acid Rap anniversary show. There were years when you didn’t seem to be quite so close. Can you tell me about them?

You know, we’ve grown up together since we were 14 years old. As brothers do sometimes, there were some years where we didn’t see eye to eye. That’s what family does, man.

But family’s also very resilient. People have to go through personal growth, self-discovery otherwise they’ll take family s— to the grave with them. Now, I’m in a positive, loving relationship with myself. So anywhere there is discord I know it can be transcended.

It’s also been 10 years since Chance rapped "And I still get jealous of Vic/And Vic's still jealous of me." What's your relationship with competition nowadays? 

Rap is, by its nature, extremely competitive, and it’s something I’ve had to reframe and recontextualize. Now I know that our biggest competition is with ourselves. 

And so, if I can be the best me that I can be, if I can write the best verse, if I can do the best performance, then I'm succeeding. You have to actualize your potential. The only crime in this game is to be less than yourself. 

Earlier this year you referenced your 2016 Drake diss track during a freestyle on Sway, calling it "a big mistake/But when you raised in a cage all you know is MMA." What made you want to address that?

I was just being really transparent and honest in that freestyle. I think the dopest lines take honesty and turn it into a metaphor, into wordplay, into something witty. 

I think that’s why we — or I — love Dave Chappelle. He takes real critiques of the Black experience and turns it into a real whippersnapper. So as far as the Drake line, I wanted to give it context in an adult way, to relate it to my upbringing and all the ways I’ve grown to recognize how stupid it was. 

Victor is your second studio album in six years. What made you want to release these songs as an album rather than as another EP or mixtape?

The album was originally going to be called C Tape to finish off the V Tape and I Tape EP trilogy, but I think just in the process of doing that, opinion on EPs really shifted. People devalue music. People are like, Man, it's astounding that this is only your second album, you know? 

It's not such a big difference from seven songs to 10 songs but its reception means so much. When you say "album" people just think completely differently. So instead of doing the VIC trilogy, I thought, let me just use my name. Just call it Victor.

Why did you decide to name your album after yourself? 

About last October, I was on a deep dive on mushrooms in the woods and I was meditating on the genesis of my name. I was named Victor to commemorate the victories and battles of an ancestor from my father's family — he was fighting in the Burma Camp in Ghana against the invasion of the British and the subsequent robbing of African people from the continent. In many ways, he was a freedom fighter. 

I speak a lot in this album about working to have people released from prison, like man, this was ordained for me. You know, it’s no coincidence that I would be named after a freedom fighter and I would grow to become one myself. And I had another realization in that moment: That no matter what I experience — the ups, downs, scuffles, controversies — I am named to be the victor of them all. 

Do you believe music has been passed down to you as a tool for liberation also?

Yes, my uncle [Kofi Sammy] is a pioneer of Nigerian highlife music. He was a contemporary of Fela Kuti. Fela, as you know, was a very notable liberator. My uncle's music was really political and educational, and he handed that down to me. Although, he did tell me recently, when I had him come out at the festival, something I thought was so interesting. He said: "Don’t use your music for politics, use your voice for God."  

At that moment, I took it at face value. I thought he was telling me to make gospel music, because he's really Christian. But the more I think about it, the more I realize it was a really profound thing to say. He’s coming into the later years of his life with next to nothing, and I think he was reflecting on the bridges he’d burned. There were times when he was really close to the president of Ghana, and he was so outspoken and so political. 

In many ways, that's something that I've been learning to implement myself. It's like, how do I move purposefully with God and the school of thought that I'm raised in — you know, the Black Panther Party, Malcolm X — a politics without bloodshed, and still be a warrior? I’m learning how not to always be the aggressor, to act with forbearance.

Is that a principle you take with you into the studio, to act from a place of forbearance rather than aggression? 

I don't know that I want to lose my aggression; I just want control. You know, I do a lot of combat training, and we're taught to emulate a lion who is completely relaxed until the moment they strike into action. They pounce into extreme force and violent aggression, and then relax. And so I think about that in a creative process, I use that aggression and then turn back to a calm state. 

Sometimes the voices in my head are so loud and the anxiety and the fear and expectations become a cacophony. But similar to my combat training, my creative process is all about staying in the moment.  How do I find peace and calm so that I can stay in control of my own mind?

It feels like you’re really going prophet mode. I’ve always thought of Common as operating from that space too. What was it like working with him? What did you learn from him?

He’s a gem in the studio. He had a palo santo with him, and he was just sitting there with it — I might even try to get a palo santo before I go to the studio right now. And the thing about Common is that he's very calm, very relaxed. He's always gracious. Like, he always introduces the people that are with him. You can tell he treats his people with a lot of respect. And he just moves in love, you know? 

I think I learned that from him before I ever met him. I mean, I've been learning things from Common since when I was a kid, way before I knew him. Common has a song called "A Song For Assata" where he details [Black Liberation Army activist] Assata Olugbala Shakur’s story, it’s basically like Cliff Notes in hip hop form. It inspired me so much because not only did it teach me a crucial piece of American history but it also opened my eyes to how much of a tool to educate hip-hop can be.

Do you envision your music as a tool for manifestation?

Yeah, man, music is a powerful tool for manifestation. That's why hip-hop is the most commercially successful and impactful musical genre of all time. It’s a verbose art form full of artists telling you "this is what I’m gonna do, I'm gonna change the world" to a different degree than any other genre has ever done. 

Hip-hop has been, like, these young guys from the hood telling you how they're gonna make it out. And the power of our words is so significant. We can build and destroy just with the things we say. So I manifested life as a rap star from childhood.

You say your purpose as a kid was to become a rap star. Now that you are one, what is your purpose now?

My purpose now is to spread the truth.

What does that mean to you? 

It takes many forms. It can be the truth of my experience. Truth can be a key or a window into how you view your own experience. Truth can be a commentary on society or structures or ideas. Truth can be love; just purely spreading love.

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