Vic Mensa fed the streets today with the release of a hot freestyle over the beat of Twenty One Pilots' "Heathens." On the track, he gets real about losing family to violence in Chicago. "Since they killed my brother dead wonder why I be faded/At times I feel guilt for being the boy who lived/I could have been the one with that knife inside my ribs/I guess God had bigger plans for the kid/When I woke up still alive on that hospital bed," he raps.
He also has some harsh words for the police, noting that no matter the level of success a black man in America achieves, he'll still be looked at as a criminal. "Man, trust/You can rock a Rollie or handcuffs/Either way the police gonna say pull your pants up/Since you in the county they don't want you to stand up," he spits.
The "Heathens" freestyle comes in the wake of a ton of political activism from Vic. He recently showed up at the Dakota Access Pipeline protests near Cannonball, North Dakota to lend his voice to the cause. He spoke to Complex about the trip, saying he believed the government was waging "chemical warfare" against the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in order to stop their protests. Soon after, the tribe won a major victory as the Army Corps of Engineers put a temporary halt on pipeline construction in order to study possible alternative routes for it.
You can stream Vic Mensa's "Heathens" freestyle below via SoundCloud.
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