Along with The Weeknd and Fetty Wap; Kanye West selects three more up and coming artist to don the latest YEEZY collection gear. Vic Mensa, Tink, and newly acquired G.O.O.D. Music artist Holt have been selected as models for the Adidas Originals line.
All three being homegrown in Chicago, they all speak on growing up in the Windy City and their music.
Vic Mensa:
“It’s not Hollywood,” he says. “You don’t grow up seeing movie stars hopping out of limos. We draw from different influences. It’s cold and gray outside right now, which doesn’t make me want to write a song about palm trees and beautiful women. I feel more compelled to talk about what these bricks made me feel.”
“So many people are content with believing the bullshit they’re told,” he says. “My mom raised me to question authority. I’ve never been good with it. The idea of respecting something because that’s the way it is never resonated with me. I don’t know how to bow down.”
“For some reason when I’m in Chicago,” Tink says, “my music feels more like my original sound—unfiltered and raw.”
“You grow up quick coming out of Chicago,” she says. “You go to school and you see friends and over the summer they pass—just reckless violence. You become numb to it and it gives you a tough skin.”
On her album Think Tink:
“I feel like I’m the voice for my generation, especially for women,” she says. “My album is a day in the life of a normal human being, and that’s why I know it’s going to connect because I’m not dancing around the truth.”
“I was signed previously as a rapper but I don’t rap at all anymore,” he says. “This music I’m producing has no genre yet. I’m sure people are going to put it into one, but I won’t. I just make sounds.”
On his single “Perfect”:
“Those people who say you can’t do something,” he says, “they’re very much wrong and they deserve to be called out for it. This song is calling them out. It’s like, all I ever wanted to be was perfect, so I tried. That’s the lyric. It’s got super gangster beats on the chorus but live drums on the verse, then breakdowns and a lot of guitar. It’s everything in one.”
