Vic Mensa Quotes

I don't write all my stuff. Everybody always thinks that. But in just about every album I've ever had has been about 50-50 songs I've written or co-written and other people's songs.

We were definitely new to the whole music thing. The first album was a real collaborative effort between us, the writers, and the A&R people at Columbia Records. We really worked to find out what our sound was.

For the first three years, when I was writing, I was doing sessions with a whole bunch of different people all the time every day until I met Lindy Robbins, who kind of mentored me. And then, once you find that, all the pieces come together.

I started rapping at the age of 12. That's when I wrote my first song, but I was more intrigued on learning how the recording process works: how do you create music and what materials I needed. So I educated myself musically so that I could focus on creating my own.

I feel like I kind of earned my stripes working with The Stereotypes. It was maybe my 6th songwriting session I've ever been to, and they just gave me and a writer I used to write with 3-4 tracks and kinda just let us come up with whatever.

I was Eazy's pen, because he couldn't write lyrics.

At the end of the day, I just like to make the best music that I can make and put it out to the world and see how they respond to it.

We travel so much as touring musicians and artists that sometimes, when you hear a great song that you really think could be on your project, you go ahead and record it instead of try to write it.

Coldplay are just four friends trying to make great music.

It was kind of easier for me to do records that didn't take a year or two years of my life to write and to make.

It took me a long time to learn how to write a good song.

I spend a lot of time working in the studio as a producer, not just a singer.

I actually quite like promo, which is quite odd for an artist, but recording's not the easiest thing.

It's not like making records is terrible. Still, I do find the writing of the songs and the live shows to be the things that give you the most clear picture of what it's all about.

It's what I do. I don't deserve any awards for this, it's just music. It's just writing songs. You sit down, you write a song, you record it. You tour and play the songs live, dress them up a bit differently, or dress them down.

I was never in the business of trying to put my name out there - I was really focused on music and records and being in the studio.

We influence singing but never really songwriting.

It's a total big difference between a person that got lyrics and a person that can make hit singles. I'm a person that can make some hit singles. I'm not in no booth trying to be a lyrical genius. I'm preparing to make me some singles, and as I develop as a man, then they'll respect my emcee skills.

I have no shame in making music that maybe, if you listen to it long enough, you'll realize you've heard this or that part of it before. I'm still very excited by an amazingly written song, so that's really the thing that I work on when I make records with people.

I write a song to be recorded. And to some extent to be performed, but definitely more to be recorded than performed, because the recording will last longer than a performance.

My second album was written while I was on the road promoting the first record. I tried to take my personal experiences and elevate them to universal experiences, so that I wasn't writing songs about living on a tour bus or being on a TV set for the first time.

I love making records; I love making music; I love writing songs.

He wanted to play accordion on something of mine and I said you can play accordion, but I want you to play piano and organ on some stuff. He came over a couple times a week for two weeks and gave me therapy as to whether I should do The Thorns or not.

I've always had a lot of creative impact on the music with Timbaland.

So it was just a case of getting a bunch of songs that I had been writing for years but hadn't recorded together, and the result was My Own Best Enemy.