In a wide-ranging new interview with Big Boy, Vic Mensa discussed almost all aspects of his new album The Autobiography. But it was when talk turned to Vic's relationship with Jay Z, who the Chicago rapper said served as an executive producer on the project, that things got interesting.
Mensa said that Hov would listen to songs and offer advice—and, in one instance, convinced the young artist to take a diss out of a song.
You can hear Vic talk about Jay Z's influence on The Autobiography, including its disses (or lack thereof) at around the 13:00 mark of the interview above.
"There was a situation where I had a line that I said something that was kind of dissing somebody else, and it wasn’t really necessary," Vic remembered. "I just wanted it because it was a good bar, and I took it off. I didn’t want to take it off at all. I played it for [Jay] and he didn’t really say to take it off. We was all having a conversation about it, me, him and [No I.D.] and everybody in the room—and then, later on, he hit me thinking about it, and he was like, 'You know, I think you should take that off of there.'"
"I'm like, 'You know, I'm gonna keep that on there,'" Vic continued. "And he told me something that was a really good piece of advice for me to grow from. He told me, 'Do you, but what you're doing won't work out in your favor, because your heart is not in it. The universe only works one way.' That made me think, because...I was dissing another rapper really for no reason. That shifted my perspective on it, and I'm like, I don't need to be tearing down another young black man, regardless of if I like the music or not. We have so much opposition outside of our community, trying to eat off of us, and parasites trying to feed off of our energy. There's no need for us to be tearing each other down. We've gotta be more unified than that."
And who was the diss aimed at? Vic doesn't say, but it's worth noting that back in April, he spit some bars during a performance at the University of Cincinnati that contained a Lil Yachty diss. Similar lyrics, minus the Yachty diss, appeared not long afterwards on his song "OMG."
