Vic Mensa Explains Why The Government Does Not Want The People To Be United (Video)

Twenty-four-year-old Roc Nation artist Vic Mensa was asked what makes someone a threat to the government in his most recent Montreality interview. In reply, Mensa dropped some knowledge about the exact moment governments get nervous. In doing so, he made illustrative links to assassinated Black leaders from history.

“Anybody becomes a threat to the government when you start to talk about hidden truths, anything divergent from a revisionist-history agenda and American.” After pausing, Vic continues, “What do they call it, patriotism? …When you’re in school as a kid they don’t teach you the things you need to know to be informed and to be a free-thinker,” Vic says. “They teach you the things you need to know in order to play a part, to be a cog in a system.”

People can be “vocal” Mensa adds, saying that you can “even be anti-establishment and vocal.” But the real problems start when radical or revolutionary political leaders “start connecting the dots” and seeking out coalitions with people outside their immediate communities.

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Chicago-born MC Mensa then referred to Fred Hampton, the Black Panther Party leader who was shot and killed during a police raid on the Black Panther Party headquarters in 1969. Mensa said that Hampton’s life was at risk from the moment he set up the “Rainbow Coalition” (the Coalition linked the Students For A Democratic Society, The Blackstone Rangers, a street gang from Chicago’s South Side and the Puerto Rican group Young Lords among others). He also spoke of Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., both of whom were assassinated, in similar terms.

“You start connecting the dots [and uniting people of different races] that’s when they’re going to kill you,” Mensa says, making a gesture as if cutting his throat. “That’s when you are a real threat to the government is when you start uniting people that have been divided to conquer them.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Mensa offers his thoughts on the distance between two of his mentors: Kanye West and JAY-Z. Mensa then concludes with some advice for new artists. “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid,” he warns. “Find for yourself. Blaze your own path, blaze your own trail. You have been misled and you will be misled if you continue to allow yourself to be. And I always tell young artists, be unapologetically you.”

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This year, Mensa released two projects: a four-song EP, The Manuscript and his full-length Roc Nation debut, The Autobiography.