Vic Mensa
Chicago Hyde Park rapper and SaveMoney co-founder who moved from the band Kids These Days to a Roc Nation solo career, releasing “The Autobiography” in 2017.
Hyde Park and Kids These Days
Victor Kwesi Mensah was born in Chicago on June 6, 1993, to a Ghanaian father and an American mother, and grew up in Hyde Park near the Kenwood border. At Whitney M. Young Magnet High School he met Chance the Rapper, and as a teenager he co-founded the SaveMoney crew, whose circle included Joey Purp, Towkio and Brian Fresco. In 2009 he formed the band Kids These Days, which released the EP “Hard Times” (2011) and the mixtape “Traphouse Rock” (2012) before splitting in May 2013.
Solo start
His first solo mixtape, “Innanetape,” came out on September 30, 2013. The house-leaning single “Down on My Luck” followed in 2014, and in 2015 he appeared on the Kanye West-assisted “U Mad.” Roc Nation announced his signing on April 21, 2015, after he inked the deal with Jay-Z backstage at the On the Run Tour in Chicago, and he also earned a Grammy nomination as a co-writer of West's “All Day.”
Roc Nation releases
The EP “There's Alot Going On” (June 2016) reached No. 127 on the Billboard 200 and included the protest song “16 Shots.” His debut studio album “The Autobiography,” released July 28, 2017, debuted at No. 27 with about 15,000 first-week sales, and Jay-Z later brought him on the 4:44 Tour. In 2019 he launched the punk-rap project 93Punx, whose self-titled album arrived August 23 of that year.
Later work
Mensa released “I Tape” in 2021 and the album “Victor” on September 15, 2023, featuring Chance the Rapper, Common, Rapsody, Jay Electronica and Thundercat. He co-founded the SaveMoneySaveLife foundation, which runs health and arts programs in Chicago, and acted in the 2020 film “Akilla's Escape.”
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