Vic Mensa has opened up about the inspiration behind his latest single and it’s as poignant as it is thought-provoking.
During an appearance on The Daily Cannon that premiered on Tuesday (August 29), the 30-year-old discussed the subject matter of “Blue Eyes” and how he began writing it years ago.
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“I started writing it six–seven years ago, actually,” he said. “I had gone and done ayahuasca for the first time and I heard a higher voice that told me, ‘I used to want blue eyes, that is the root of my pain,’ and I thought that was so heavy.
“I knew I had to write a song, but it wasn’t until I left Ghana last year — my aunt, she had a wound on her face, and my father was telling me, ‘I asked her 10 years ago to stop bleaching her skin,’ and that broke my heart.”
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Vic proceeded to explain that she developed skin cancer as a result of the practice, which is what eventually took her life.
About the distorted self-image issues that continue to plague postcolonial countries to this day, he explained that it is “a huge issue across Africa, across the Caribbean.”
The powerful new single finds Mensa reflecting on the role colorism and racism played in his upbringing as a young kid from Chicago, and how he came around to love himself and his culture.
“It’s like I was livin’ two lives/ Internalized self-hatred with racism in society is as American as apple pies/ Psychologically terrorized/ To the point where the mirror could even tell you lies/ I would stare at my parents and wonder why my appearance was different, used to wish I was white, would fantasize,” he raps.
Mensa is currently gearing up to drop Victor on September 15 and “Blue Eyes” will be on its tracklist. The new album will be his sophomore follow-up to 2017’s The Autobiography, which peaked at No. 27 on the Billboard 200.
The rapper teased the LP with a new trailer last week, which finds a shirtless Vic Mensa sitting on a stool in the center of an art gallery as artists work around him. It closes on a portrait of him that one of the painters was working on.
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“And I tried to tell you that I’m not gon’ stop/ I was down bad, still came out on top,” he raps on the song. “I been up a milli, brought it back to the block/ Give no fuck, middle finger up ’til I drop!”
