Vic Mensa Explains the Power of Being Emotionally Honest
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Rapper Vic Mensa is a professional dissector of emotions. Through his music, the 30-year-old Chicago native tackles topics ranging from addiction to poverty to racism to mental health struggles.
Not only is this radical honesty a core part of Vic Mensa's success as an artist, but it's essential to how he operates as a person.
In the latest episode of the Men's Health Instagram Live series Friday Sessions, the artist Vic Mensa joined host Dr. Gregory Scott Brown to share his mental health journey, his experiences with going to therapy and meditating, and how self-love and compassion improved his life.
"My way of processing my experiences is by being honest about them," Mensa told Dr. Brown. "In conversation, in music—really in art. That's probably what started me to just focus on my mental health. I found those vulnerable moments will create some of the best music. So I just lean into that. And I realized in that process that it helps other people." He added, "That's how you end up with something that will strike an emotional chord for someone else."
In the conversation, Mensa said he sees being transparent about mental health not only as a duty to himself but to his community. In relaying his own experience through music, he said he hopes to help address and undo longstanding mental health stigma in the Black community.
"For much of history, being a crazy Black man or crazy Black woman has been a weaponized label used against us to destroy our families or to marginalize or, in other ways, damage," Mensa said, "So I think Black people have an aversion to [confronting mental health issues]."
He added, "I'm sure part of it has to do with the church being deeply entrenched in our culture. The feeling of 'just pray about it' exists so deeply in African cultures. The crazy catch-22 about it, though, is that the trauma is so deep. I don't know many other communities in America that experience the same levels of violence and trauma that I know to be real to us. Yet we're the ones that have the most difficulty confronting it...There are all these structures in place—mentally and otherwise—to keep us from taking us seriously."
Mensa shared with Dr. Brown that he's been in therapy for most of his life, saying it's a good resource for anyone no matter their background or mental health status.
"It's beneficial for everyone to have an outside perspective to help assess things and just make sense of the events of your life," he said, adding, "I truly don't believe that there is a human being that therapy would not benefit. That's like saying conversation is not good for a person. Because therapy is really just an informed conversation with someone that has an educated perspective to be able to process to make sense of the experiences that you're having."
But that doesn't mean those conversations are easy. Mensa said the hardest part of therapy is having to embrace radical honesty—the same radical honesty found in his growing number of albums.
"I had to be honest enough to tell this person things that I've never really told anyone else—things that I don't speak about, things that are repressed, things I may have trouble accepting," he said of seeing a therapist. "But in order to work toward growth, I can't keep some secrets for myself."
Though therapy has been integral in bettering his mental health, Mensa says that the time he spends with himself—meditating, writing, thinking—is the work that has the biggest impact on his mental health.
"In my path, I've come to realize that the most beneficial work is self-work," he said. "It's internal—and being disciplined in that. And going to therapy regularly is a part of that discipline. But also meditating daily is super impactful for me."
He added, "For me, the work that I do in the silence—in the dark, solo—ends up being the most impactful. And it's the most difficult."
What's also difficult is confronting the idea that men—especially Black men—should be more guarded with their emotions. It's a "hypermasculine inclination," he says, that runs deep for Mensa, even years into his mental health journey.
"Sometimes when one of my guys is coming into the group chat like, "Wanna check in with you all today. How's everybody's wellness?" I'm like, Man, this shit makes me uncomfortable. This shit feels soft. But is honesty soft though? Because I think honesty is more difficult."
Though emotional honesty is more difficult than bottling things up, Mensa says the rewards are well worth the discomfort. But as a busy man, prioritizing mental wellness isn't always easy, even if you know the rewards. That's why Mensa believes giving yourself patience is essential to any mental wellness journey.
"If I fall off the horse, just get back on," he said. "I haven't meditated every single day since I've decided I was gonna meditate every day. I fall off here and there. And I just make sure to pick it back up—and I try not to be self-deprecating because I didn't do it today or I didn't do it yesterday. Just recognize, I know, this is good for me. I've noticed as a part of success, so I'm gonna get back on the horse."
Watch the full conversation below:
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