Vic Mensa has launched a brief movie as an instance the poignant messages on his Victor album lower, “Blue Eyes.”
The highly effective music finds Mensa reflecting on the function colorism and racism performed in his upbringing as a biracial younger child from Chicago, and the way he got here round to like himself and his tradition.
The video, which premiered on Wednesday (November 29), was shot in Jamaica and dives into the problems in a theatrical method – together with one scene the place a lady catering to standard magnificence requirements by sporting a blonde wig removes it because the clip progresses.
“The song ‘Blue Eyes’ is one of the most personal I’ve ever made and illustrates the impact of European beauty standards on the mind of the African, using my experience and that of my aunt who recently passed from the effects of skin bleaching,” Vic mentioned in an announcement with the video’s launch.
During an look on The Daily Cannon in late August, Vic mentioned the subject material of “Blue Eyes” and the way he started engaged on the monitor years in the past.
“I started writing it six–seven years ago, actually,” he mentioned. “I had gone and done ayahuasca for the first time and I heard a higher voice that told me, ‘I used to want blue eyes, that is the root of my pain,’ and I thought that was so heavy.
“I knew I had to write a song, but it wasn’t until I left Ghana last year — my aunt, she had a wound on her face, and my father was telling me, ‘I asked her 10 years ago to stop bleaching her skin,’ and that broke my heart.”
Mensa proceeded to clarify that she developed pores and skin most cancers on account of the observe, which is what finally took her life.
Speaking in regards to the distorted self-image points that proceed to plague postcolonial nations to this present day, he defined that it’s “a huge issue across Africa, across the Caribbean.”
Vic Mensa has been on a strong path in 2023, and not too long ago celebrated a serious milestone in his sobriety.
In September, the Chicago native took to Instagram to rejoice two years of readability. Sharing a collection of health images, the 30-year-old talked in regards to the prolonged but rewarding means of setting himself straight.
“In many ways i would liken it to running up hill — at first it is difficult, but after time your strength increases, your endurance increases,” he wrote within the caption. “Two years i’ve been raw dogging life [crying laughing emoji] I’ve had to learn how to face my emotions head on, nowhere to run to, nothing to hide behind. I have thought a lot about the difference between fun and joy.
“Many of the things I’ve always done in the pursuit of fun didn’t actually bring me joy, were actually antithetical to the pursuit of joy. I’m at a point where if an action is not actively furthering my goals, professionally, mentally, spiritually, physically… it doesn’t have a place in my life right now.”
He concluded by declaring that he’s constructing “the best version” of himself, somebody who individuals must respect even when they don’t get his motivation.
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