Yeah, rapp rate our podcast Allie Wilson, speed out, beat out, What's upby great? We be back at it, men, because this guy's making a lot of noise. Man longer waited, Man, The autobiography is here, Man vic Menza, How are you, sir? I'm good Man. Thank you for having me. Congratulations, Man, thank you very much. Talk about this journey, man, because I know, like, does it because you put out so much music, like, does it feel like a debut? Does it feel like a new a new chapter right now?
It really does. Man. I really feel as if I'm putting my first major major foot into carbon footprint, you know, kind of in the history. Because this album is is for me really returning to square one and the themes I'm touching on and and the you know, just the lyrical content and the production, the styles included and sampled, the people involved, and it feels everyweight. It just feels like the way that I would want to do a
debut album. And I've I've put out different music at different times, it had different directions and different energies, and this is what feels the most me and it's it's the most personal, it's the most revealing, the most honest, and that's why it's my debut album. It's like a
process you've been constantly like tinkering with it, right. You talk a little about that process of just getting into the place where you feel like, Okay, this is the story I want to tell, right, Well, honestly, that's that's basically the story of the album. For the most part.
It's like it's it's taken you more or less through the last like I guess four so years of my life, four or five years of my life, which we're just very tumultuous, and I'm growing and like anybody that's growing up, you try things, uh, you're trying to find yourself and figure yourself out, and you know, adding like an element of uh public opinion and pressure and people watching you and at the same time like being around the world,
like coming in the large sums of money. It could just be uh, like anybody's growing process, but magnified and like with a bunch of exclamation points after it. So every time you fall, it's like you fall harder and you come up part, you know what I mean, everybody got something to say and ultimate peaks and valleys word up. That's and that's exactly what I'm talking about in the album.
And that was the process really, And you know, there were certain points in time where there was music that I made and I released that I didn't I didn't really feel like it reflected me, and I didn't feel like I was saying the things that I wanted to say. And sometimes I went down a path that was maybe you know, following trends or following what I felt was expected of me, and and at points in time it did well for me, but it never did well to me,
if you understand what I'm saying. So it's kind of like this is m music that I say it's the debut, not only because you know it is proper, but it's also like it's music that I know I could stand on in fifteen years, twenty years and be like, I can I can honor this song that I wrote for my homie that got killed in Chicago. I could honor
you know, having on Earth. Yeah, I can honor these different these different records and these different experiences, and I think that they're gonna be around for a long time. You have this record called Almost There, and you say, fans always said he want the old VIC back, but like, what does the old vic What do you think they mean by that? I don't even know what they mean, you know. You know, people say that like about any artists, about any artists, and I've I've probably said it about
an artist before. I try to catch myself when I find myself doing that, because I'm like, I want to allow artists space to grow, even though I might love
what they've done before. And I think that's the whole thing about about artists, and you know, rappers specifically really because it's it's so verbose, and like my favorite rappers have always been really lyrical, and you knew a lot about them just by listening to their music, so you connect to them and you kind of feel like you know them, and then when you see them go somewhere that you didn't expect or you didn't want, then it can like it can kind of like it can feel
like your friends switched up on you, you know, when really it's just it's just them growing and being a person, you know what I mean. I'm sure you're not the same exactly today as you were twenty years ago, you know what I mean? You feel like more fans coming to you. One of the Internet VIC or like there's
a lot going on VIC. I think a lot of people did connect to me, um with you know, things I was talking about, and there's a lot going on, a lot of people do talk to me about, Like I think when I was saying the old VIC there people were really thinking about like Internet tape and stuff like that, and and I'm trying to tell them, I'm like, see, if you really really was doing your homework and digging and and and knowing what's going on, like you would know.
I had like a I had a mixtape when I was sixteen, which is how I first first met no I D called straight Up. That's like lyrically and and and sonically is way more in line with the autobiography and my album right now and something like almost there or even though there's a lot going on than it is. The Internet, the Internet was that was the beginning of when I was really on drugs. Like you said that whole tape musoms, Yeah, it was like that was and
at first it was an experimental thing. But you know that's why it's like so fucking like carefree and like very like just out there, you know, and it's like, um, and I'm I'm experimental, but I don't really look at that music and listen to that music as like being like a reflection of like me at center, you know
what I mean. Like, I think the way that that I'm writing now really reminds me more of the way I was writing when I was sixteen seventeen than anything kind of in between, because there was a point of time from when I was like nineteen until I was like twenty two and started making this album, which is when I made the song. There's a lot going on and things like that, um all between them, I was
kind of I was spiraling out of control. Man. I was like I was very dependent on drugs and my mental state was deteriorating, and my relationships were deteriorating, and ship was like although I was like coming into money and like being on stages and going around the world, I was not happy. You know, we hear that a lot. I mean, you talk about it too, Like we hear
a lot of artists talk about depression. We're allowed to talk about you know, oh, medication, Opie really Molly Perker said, all these kind of drugs over counter drugs, Like it's changed. It's not like a crack thing. It's not like that type of smoke crept smoke and crack the crack, the light up, the crack crack back. But do you think what do you think it was? Do you think it was? What do you think was all this stuff coming at you? Like?
What do you attributed to that you think that you became to align on the drugs during that period, because it looks like on service, all these blessings are coming your way right right signed the back Nation, Kaye wants to work with you. All these people want to work with you. Like what's going on? It makes you like go down that path you think? You know, I really explore that in the album. I was kind of what
the process of the album was like for me. Was I brought in Uh, a friend of mine and Cathy Ian Dolly and she's a she's a writer that helped me stepped in kind of like as a biographer for
the autobiography, and you know, she's asking me questions. We're going through my whole life experience, like from early childhood, and you know, I'm exploring different things that I was seeing around me that kind of influenced me, influenced me later and whether it was like issues with kind of feeling ostracizing, unaccepted in different worlds because because my my family is like multicultural, you know, and I never really felt like I was fully accepted with black people or
definitely not considered to be white, you know. Um so from a young age, I feel like that's something that was in my mind. Then you know, I grow up or I start to grow up, and I'm looking outside and and although I'm in a two parent household, um like watching kids selling crack and fiends buying crack, like across the street, and you know, people being shot and all of these things. And I'm seeing like people close to me shooting up Heroin waving needles at me. And
you know, you take all these things in. You know, you're eleven, twelve, third in fourteen, grow up a little bit, start doing what I'm doing. But I was always kind of of the I'm gonna I'm gonna give it to you, but I ain't, you know, I'm not doing drugs. That was always kind of like a mentality I had. And then you know, as we got a little bit older, um, you know, the mentality just kind of changed and and things became like a lot more accepted and everybody's trying
this and trying that, and people are different. But for me, it took me down a path of like kind of losing who I was because I've always um well not always, but from a young age, like around fifteen years old. UM is when like I first ever saw a therapist and I remember they gave me like some psychiastric medications zo Loft, and it was making me have zapps in my brain. I was like, I can't funk with this.
This is weird, but you know, I was. I was definitely experiencing like anxiety to a major degree and starting to s and things that are kind of like genetic, you know, things that can be triggered also by marijuana. A lot of people don't know, you know, I started smoking weed when I was eleven, and I remember when I started having the anxiety, and right then the weeds started to affect me differently, and then I started to like not go all the way back