good evening from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. tonight a question with the rapper and activist joins us to talk about his long awaited debut album. the product is confrontational, uplifting and steeped in a personal story that envelopes his hometown of chicago. we're glad you joined us. vig mensa coming up in just a moment.

so pleased to welcome vic mens too. program. he has worked with jay z and kanye and won plays for his politically charged lyrics. the autobiography is out this week and tackles serious issues and features appearances from pretty familiar faces. before our conversation with him, now a clip from the video for the song "rage." ♪ i want you to rage tonight ♪ before your final fly

♪ i want you to rage into the night ♪ ♪ i want you to know your ride before your final flight ♪ ♪ just as a burning bird >> i'm looking at this shot of all the water. i'm thinking what is in the watter that you're drink in chicago? collin, kanye, chance, you. the narrative that we get out of chicago is the story line that you know. that black people are killing black people and nothing is good outside of michigan avenue. >> right. >> and, yet, every other year or so there seems to be another creator, innovative, ground breaking artist that comes out of that city. what's happening in chicago? >> i think we have going on in chicago is a very polarizing environment.

and very extreme. chicago is a city of extremes. it's if not the most segregated cities in america, one of them. you can be in a two parent household like i was and n. hyde park across the street from the projects and crack sales and six blocks from obama's house. all at once. and that influences us. you know, as artisted. like you mentioned, the narrative that is driven primarily about chicago is savages, murderers, basically sub-human. i feel it doesn't represent the systemic products behind what we have going on in chicago. you have communities that have zero investment in the community. you got kids growing up.

it's 1980 schoolbooks still in schools. food deserts. you can't get fresh fruits and vegetables in a three mile radius of your home. you got to eat flaming hots. you have buildup from factories in gary, indiana that, are build up in our neighborhood so we all have asthma. you wonder how we grow up in a toxic environment and turn into toxic people. i mean it makes perfect sense to me. it's been designed that way. >> so everybody in chicago, whether they acknowledge it or not, they see what you just elaborated on so beautifully. the question is when you're looking at it, you see it through an artistic lens. how do you take what you see, what everybody else sees and apply it to your craft? >> when i started rapping, my lyrics were about the man on

47th street. my lyrics were about the kids i saw riding bikes selling crack to feens. simultaneously, i was reading malcolm x and huey newton. i'm looking at the streets with a lens of progression. you know, watching somebody like malcolm go from being a hustler and a pimp to being one of the greatest thinkers, writers, and orators of american history and of all time. so i always had a perspective that there was more to this situation. in addition to the fact that like i mentioned a second ago, i grew up in a two parent household. my father is a phd from west africa. my mother, is you know, from upstate new york. so my home life was a whole different lens. and when i'm stepping outside. so i had this due alt going on

that really influenced me and inspired me to ask more questions. you know? and recognize that what i'm seeing outside is deeper than it appears to be. and it doesn't stop at the surface. so that comes into my art just naturally. just by being me. ed. >> so you're looking at what you're seeing in chicago. you apply your artistic lens to it. we see how it plays itself out of your craft. yet, there are a bunch of brothers in the rat game who see the same things that you saw. grew up in the same environment or adjacent to the same environment that you grew into. yet it doesn't come out in the music as conscious. it comes out with a whole different kind of language, a whole different appeal. i'm not trying to demonize anybody. but yours comes out with a consciousness to it that doesn't exist in everybody else's stuff. why did you go that route as opposed to the other route? >> well, i recognize i'm lucky.

i have a father. i've had a father my whole life. so present father. and that was -- that was a gift from god. you know? 50 to 75% of my friends don't have a father. if they do, he's been locked up and they might not have known him until they were 18. so i have something to fall back on. and i think a lot of people coming up in chicago and the rap game, and if they are in chicago, coming from a very different perspective than me. they're coming from a perspective that was a lot more desperate. and had much less structure and really no plan b. when you take the kids that have only ever known gang banging and violence and you give them a microphone, they're going to tell what you they know. and if it's dangerous and it's

offensive and it's violent it's because america made them that way. that's the way that america made them. and intended them to be. you know, what i'm thinking about these things, i speak about willie lynch, how to break a slave. you pick the light skin against the dark skin. still going on to this day. beauty standards. you remove the father from the family. auction block, prison block. and you set a cycle in motion that they can step back and they don't even have to keep breaking us because they set this cycle in motion and we're going to break each other down. you got kids that are coming out of that cycle. and they're rapping they're real life. i can't hold -- i can't hold it against them for saying what they know. now as a man, i know that i got to grow.

and i can't be defined by society's pressures and ideas and notions of who i should be. that's me. so in that respect, as a man, you got to grow. but i can't say you are wrong for telling your perspective when it's the truth. >> it may not be wrong. but there is also a fine line. the fine line to my mind, vic, between -- a fine line between telling a story and not being preachy. telling a story that people can relate to and be empowered to and not being die tactic in that. how do you balance that line? how do you walk that fine line? >> for me, i just tell storty. and that's what this album is. that's why i call it "the autobiography." it's just the truth about my life and my experiences. there is no embellishment. it's not really metaphorical. i mean, my perspectives within

it may be metaphorical oral gorical and relatable to different situations. but this is just the facts. just one after the other. so i'm not even really approaching it from a perspective of is this preachy or is it not? it's just what happened in my life. >> whether did you know that this was your gift, your calling, this is your vocation? when did you know that? and when you knew that, how did your parents take to that? i'm only asking because it seems to me that your daddy is a professor and your mother does what she does. that your parents noi mat want to hear you say i'm going to be a rapper. when did you know that? how did you break that news to your parents? >> i was lucky to really find my path early. i was around 16 years old. i was recording music and doing what i had to do to get in the studio. and my parents were upset. they want me to be getting ready for college.

and there was a xitskit is my m chewing me out for riding my bike over the 63rd street in cottage grove, you know, major war zone and be in the stud yeen school night. but pretty early on i started getting recognition and votes of confidence from people that my parents respected. so they were understanding. >> people like? >> people like no id is one of the first people that reached out to me when i was 17 years old. he executive produced this album. and my parents took it seriously. they're like you're doing shows. year all around the country. so i was just serious about it. they saw me focusing. and i really approached it like a writer. and woib late night all day every day just in my bedroom just writing. writing. it didn't matter if i had a beat, if i could even afford a studio. i was just writing. and it turned into this album.

>> yeah. so they were relatively cool with it? >> they were relatively cool it with. they gave push back. i pretended i was going to go to in a little bit. i barely got into any colleges. >> how is that possible? >> i mean -- >> i didn't apply myself. like i always did well in school. but i always had an issue with school. i had an issue with teachers. it was such a power struggle. i think that something i unpap pack -- unpack in this album, the way the school system in america, how it destroys kids and i remember being too young to understand why i was being put in a slow class with an iep in individualized education program because they didn't know how to handle me. and they didn't understand my behavior and maybe i didn't like

to share. and specifically black children i feel like are really left behind by the school sysystem. we're expelled and suspended at higher rates than any kids. the first kid i saw get held back in third grade. he failed third grade. i don't really know what maybe he didn't, you know, build his blocks the right way. he was in third grade. first one to get held back. labelled for life. you know? you're labelled dumb. next time i saw him was after high school and he was caught for double homicide. i watched him be put in that box. >> ski that question. i'm glad you went. there it's impossible to watch you on national television and hear how you express yourself and how not just articulate you

are, i hate that word in many instances, but how he will consequent you are in expressing what you really feel. it's hard to juxtapose this with the fact that you didn't get into college. but if you didn't apply yourself, i get that. furthermore, if you think that school has -- that as a black man, a young black boy if you had issues with school, i get. that i was thinking about cornell west, the great philosopher. cornell west got kiblgd out of every school he went. to strtrue storey. he got to every school in town. his mother is a schoolteacher. he got kicked out of every school so much so that he couldn't go to the school in the school district. they said you have to move to a different district. kunlt go to this school or that school, get out of town. he had to go to another school district. the point, is as you point out, they didn't know how to hand will him. his brilliance and style was so different and unique, they couldn't handle him. he ends up being one of the greatest thinkers of our time. the school system wasn't ready. you're right that not everybody

has to be a cornell west but for black boys in particular, there is a problem our system has with how to handle nem a cultural competence that some teachers, not all of them, but some teachers lack. i get that. you medicationed no intioned no. how does it feel to work with this guy? i mean to be with that guy like at this moment, you're in like the right place at the right time. >> no id, is you know, one of my biggest inspirations and mentors because being from chicago, from the south side of chicago specifically, common was my favorite rapper growing up. just hanldz down. i got the common sticker in my childhood bedroom right now. and so no id is one of the reasons that i really started to pursue hip hop. so it just feels right doing this album with him. and it feels authentic. and it feels like he's one of the few people that can fully understand where i'm coming from. >> to the extent you can put in

words, as a producer for you on this project, what did he bring to the table? what did he help you get out? >> no id brought experience and perspective and a new way to look at songwriting for me. to this album. and the way that he breaks down tempos and sounds and drums is luke a scientist. it's the way i think about lyrics. there are so many intricacies and the entire verse can change if i pronounce one word differently. and no id is somebody that, you know, he studied quincy jones. so he's coming at music from a speshgti perspective, trying to disprove what quincy jones said about music today. so he's thinking about music and hip hop music in just a far more

detailed way than i mean pretty much everybody. >> the opportunity to work with jay z. how zou describe that? >> he's a very smart guy. very intuitive. you know, really kind. somebody that i learned a lot from. i made sure that my story arced correctly and i got my point across without doing too much. >> when you have that level of personality, that level of celebrity, frankly, that level of icon who is getting behind your work, helping you produce the work and out front pushing the work, how do you -- how do you maintain a level of humility? >> i've never been a person interested in celebrity and fame. honestly, i'm more so -- i look up to these guys, you know?

from an artistic standpoint. and that's what's most important to me. din i didn't start making music to try to be famous or look like master p or something like. that i just didn't. i started because i wanted to write songs like tupac, write songs like common and kurt cobain that really touched people and impacted their lives. and that's the way i feel about holes and no id. that's the type of music they make. so more than being caught up in the flash and hollywood stardom of it, i'm just in expired being around and seeing the way they work. it just inspires me. >> you mentioned kurt cobain. your diehard fans know you started out as a lover of rock. so take me back to south side of chicago. tell me about how you got into the rock thing. i'm curious how you made the

transition to hip hop. >> i started off like you said loving rock music. that was the first music of my own choice that i was buying at coconuts record store. >> what were you buying? >> well, first i was buying like guns and roses. actually before that, more like kind of corny pop punk stuff like yellow card. and green day. dooky is a really good album. and then i started listening to guns n'roses and acdc and pink floyd. >> i used to love black in black. great album. >> 100%. and then a friend named ashley introduced me to nirvana and just flipped my whole world. and i just dove deep into that and started listening to, you know, white stripes and weezer around the same time. and that's all around the same time i was about to find hip

hop. i wasn't really into hip hop at first. i didn't understand -- i didn't understand the aggression, honestly. i was just a young kid. i didn't really feel so racial when i was a kid. it wasn't until i got a little old eastern then i started realizing that i had a label on me and i started being angry myself. >> were you not feeling racial because you are the product of an interracial marriage? >> yeah. >> your mom is white. >> my mom is white, irish and german and my dad is african. and, so you know, i was in hyde park. that is just a very multicultural neighborhood. and i just didn't. i didn't feel very racial. there are some things i look back and i realize i was being treated a certain way, like how i speak about in the schools. i didn't feel very racial until i was around like 11, 12 years old and then, you know, getting harassed by police and assaulted and treated a certain way. and that's when i started to identify with the aggression and

the anger in hip hop. and that's when i found hip hop and when i really fell in love it with. >> is there anything or are there things that you are pulled through from your love and study of rock into your performance as hip hop artists? >> 100%, yeah. so on this album, i have a song called "home wrecker," it's my favorite record. and it's one that i produced, i made the beat from a weezer sample. and weezer is just one miff favorite bands growing up. and i was lucky enough to get river's cuomo, the lead singer of weezer on the track. i think that's a little bit of a new energy for hip hop. my entire style i bring to it is just the attitude that is the genesis. hip hop was anti-establishment. it is do it yourself. hip hop is, you know, taking old records and jacking them.

basically. and saying we're going to do our thing with this. and so that's a lot of the same energy that came from grunth and puncht it was political. i will was polarizing. it was important. and that's the energy that i bring to hip hop. >> very well now that you described it that way. since you mentioned the genesis of hip hop, do you think the music still resonates or still has the power to resonate the way it used to? i'm talking specific about the message of the music. >> we know the beat is always, you know, hit hard. but there is the genre still have the power, message wise to impact the minds and hearts of people? >> 100%. you look at jay z's new album 444 that is exploring a lot of different things.

and a lot of systemic things. you know, homosexuality in the black community and just setting a real, real critical eye on america right now and on black america right now. you look at somebody like kendrick lamar and his new album often is doing the same thing. and just coming from a realistic point of view, you see i think that the issue, the issue with people looking at chicago, making rap music, discussing the problems that rap music brings up is that there's a lack of empathy. and i feel that my music represents empathy. and it gives us more than one side to the story. i think that's also what, you know, those albums i mentioned

do. >> that is what the world is lacking to be sure, vic, empathy. any second thoughts, i won't say regret, but any second thoughts about being so autobiographical? >> not one. >> yeah. >> i feel that that's my biggest gift in my biggest strength is that i'm able to be vulnerable and be honest and tell my stories with no punches pulled in the hope that i can encourage other people to tell their own story and to be honest with themselves. and one of the main themes in my album is mental health and drug addiction. that is something that is very stigmatized in the black community. something we don't want to touch. we don't want to be crazy. i'm not crazy. i don't want to see a therapist. i'm not crazy. as long as we're afraid to talk about it, then we can't erase

that shame. so i got to be honest. i have to be vulnerable. i have to be autobiographical because a lot of people have no voice and are afraid to be. >> he's a bold brother. it's hard not to love his lyrical content. it is the autobiography as told by vic mensa out this week. i think it's going to be huge. bernie san bernie sanders would say huge. best of luck. that's our show tonight. thanks for watching. as always, keep the faith. >> hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me for a conversation with arlo guthrie. that's next time. we'll see you then. ♪

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