Even
if you don't know who Vic Mensa is, seeing him walk into a room will
make your head turn. The 22-year-old Chicago-based rapper, who, on the
day we meet, has frosted tips and is wearing graphic black-and-white
custom pants that say 'Burn the Trump' and a pair of the new Converse Chuck Taylor All Star IIs, carries himself with a combination of youthful, puckish energy and
the kind of rock-star easy confidence you see in people who are
clearly comfortable in their own skin. Which makes it all the more
surprising when, over the course of our conversation, Mensa describes
spending his life feeling like an outsider."I've been a misfit for many years," he says. "I feel like I'm in-between these worlds with my arms stretched out as they pull apart...It's a constant source of tension that's existed in my life for a long time." The son of a Ghanaian-born father who teaches Economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a Caucasian American mother who's a physical therapist in the Chicago Public School system, the rapper was born Victor Mensah in Hyde Park, the neighborhood on Chicago's South Side famous for being home to both the University of Chicago and the Obamas. In a city notorious for its segregation, it's one of the few neighborhoods with noticeable diversity; you'll find fancy professors' townhomes and turn-of-the-last-century mansions walking distance from Section 8 housing and blocks where blacks and whites, Jews and Gentiles, Asians and Hispanics all raise their families. Even so, Mensa says having a biracial background wasn't always easy. "Growing up half-white and half-black, there were times when I was younger when I just wished I could be one or the other. Never being fully accepted somewhere is hard." He continues, "I'm still different, you know. I've never been 100% something that you could put in a box. I think that crosses into my music and my experience in the rap industry."
As a leader in
Chicago's post-Kanye rap renaissance, Mensa draws from an experience
that's distinct from that of his hometown rap peers like Chief Keef or
Lil Durk, whose music describes their coming-of-age in some of the
city's roughest neighborhoods and of navigating Chicago's violent gang
scenes. A teen obsessed with skateboarding, Larry Clark's Kids
and Nirvana, Mensa attended Whitney Young, one of Chicago's most
prestigious magnet high schools and also Michelle Obama's alma mater. It
was there that he and some friends formed Kids These Days, a
rap-blues-rock fusion band that would go on to sign with a major label,
play sets at Lollapalooza and on Conan, and record an album
produced by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy before flaming out in spring of 2013
over creative differences. Post-breakup, Mensa didn't waste time
wallowing in frustration or regret and instead focused his energy on
starting a solo career. His well-received Innanetape mixtape was released in November of that year and officially marked the 20-year-old as an Artist to Watch.It was also in this general timeframe that Mensa worked on a track with Chance the Rapper, a high school buddy he'd known since freshmen year when the two met at an open mic night. The song was "Cocoa Butter Kisses," the lead single off of Chance's career-launching Acid Rap mixtape. Both artists' stars began to rise, leading many music critics to compare them with each other or lump them together when talking about Chicago's hip-hop scene and the delineations between the psyched-out, genre-hopping sounds the two friends make compared to the harder drill music favored by Keef, Durk, King Louie and others. It's a lazy comparison that clearly riles Mensa a bit -- even though the two have gone on to form their own collective, SAVEMONEY. Even back as far as 2013, he told the Chicago Tribune that the comparison "is reaching in the dark, putting things side by side that don't compare...[but] the truth is we're different artists who make different music."
But now, following the release of
explosive singles with Kanye West (Mensa's "U Mad" and 'Ye's "Wolves,"
which also features Sia) and ahead of his debut studio album, Traffic, which he started working on after signing with Jay Z's Roc Nation, it's clear that there's
plenty of room for both Windy City artists."My homie, the producer Mike Uzowuru, played 'Ye some of my earliest music where I was singing and rapping," Mensa says of how he first got connected to Yeezus. "When Kanye heard it, he pretty much instantly told his people to find me. I was on my way to Australia [when his team contacted me] so I just went into overdrive trying to find a bunch of music to play for him." He continues, "But before I even played him my music, he played me his new shit and it was like, fuck, is this really happening? One of the first things he played me was 'Wolves,' and I loved the edge of it. It reminded me of the type of music I was making with punky guitar and moody and dark soundscapes. I was like, Man, this is fucking amazing. And that was the first thing I worked on of his."
In "Wolves," the song off Kanye's upcoming album, Swish, which premiered in February during his NYFW show for his collaboration with Adidas, Mensa plaintively sings, "Don't fly too high/ Your wings might melt, you're much too good to be true / I'm just bad for you," a sonic 180 from the brash, cocky rhymes off of his banger, "U Mad." It's an audio-stylistic-emotional range that he shares with Kanye and one that neatly dovetails with the juxtaposition of Mensa as both the skateboard-loving South Side misfit and the insanely popular rising rap phenom. He also shares with his famous mentor a desire to address socio-political issues, particularly those affecting the black community. In previous interviews he's confirmed that many songs on Traffic touch on political issues and back in April during the Baltimore riots following the death of Freddie Gray, he tweeted, "Don't you understand? We're tired of being murdered in the street like dogs. How many times can you be shot at before you shoot back?"
"People
say things like, 'It's just a coincidence that all these black people
get shot by police' but we have to get people to understand that this
shit is not coincidental," he says. "We live in a hell sometimes. The
system has even been set up so [black people] kill each other [as
opposed to getting killed by others]."But though Mensa's spent a lot of time thinking about -- and experiencing -- the grim realities facing many black people living in America, particularly in Chicago, the artist has a natural reason to nevertheless feel optimistic: his youth. Like a lot of people his age, he sees the cross-pollination of ideas and the support and acceptance that's fostered among young people via the Internet as cause for hope. "I think youth culture is in a place where there is so much forward momentum while the world around us continues to flash its old opinions in our face," he says. "We're just determined to keep fucking driving forward even as the negativity of the past -- ingrained institutionalized racism and police brutality -- pulls us down. We're like a blazing comet with anchors hanging off it but still flying."
And for this rapper still flying, he shows no signs of coming crashing down.
PAPER's no stranger to getting smoking hot dudes to answer personal questions: just peruse the 
How did you start boxing?
You were part of Friday Night Throwdown, which were the male model fights, and boxing became your entry to modeling, right?
That actually is a good segue into one of the usual TMI Questionnaire questions: Have you ever had a threesome?
Now that you've got the photography thing going, are you still modeling?
"When I create things I want to make sure when people see it they feel better about themselves," says photographer and designer Mayan Toledano. She's always thinking about how to tell stories and connect with the world, whether she's creating sets for her own photographs or for music videos for bands like Garden City Movement, or coming up with ideas for the feminine and feminist clothing line, 
You do a lot of work as a set designer, and you create these really dreamy, soft environments.
That sounds like my teenaged bedroom!
You mentioned earlier that dancing and fashion weren't really supportive industries. Do you find it's hard to be taken seriously as a female artist?
Hey look, it's the rare extraneous-seeming iPhone app/accessory that actually looks like a really good idea! 
Even though 
Twerking might just be one of the tamer things model/photographer/boxer 
"What I do here in my bedroom, with the stickers and the decorating, it inspires me in terms of images. It helps me create my own world," says designer 
"That feeling of risk and being on the edge is what keeps me pumping," says Mensa.
"I'm shitty model, but a good boxer," says Charlie, but, given the capital-F Face he's giving in this GIF, that can't possibly be true.
Sticker shock: Mayan's giving you bedroom eyes (from her bedroom--get it?).
The article's original artwork. Photo by Harmony Korine.
There is a long history of celebrities helping politicians shill -- and explain -- their positions and particular causes. Some of these are powerful, allowing for the distillation of complex issues into simple, striking terms, like 
Are we being trolled?
Hey, everyone! We did it. We've made it through the horrible premise on which this journey to find love was wrought (#tbt to Britt), umpteen instances of male entitlement, some run-of-the-mill slut-shaming and some very specific slut-shaming, a healthy dose of cyber-bullying, and what felt like 12 years of purgatory in Ireland. It was exhaustive, but shout-out to Kaitlyn Bristowe for being human, fallible and the most relatable Bachelorette I've seen yet. She's been through the ringer, and she deserves all the endorsement money she'll make off her Instagram for whatever protein-infused drink she chooses to pretend she consumes. 
Meanwhile, the #FeelTheBern images have gained a lot of traction with kids using the vaguely fitspirational tag to encourage their peers to mobilize for Berns -- even if it means being indiscriminately mean to Hillary Clinton without any explanation. 
English actress, singer, and style icon Jane Birkin has decided she's had enough of Hermès using her name on their famous handbag. Or, more specifically, she's decided she's had enough unless the French luxury brand puts an end to, in the actress' words, the "
In third grade, three friends and I started our own gang: the Converse Cousins. We were the only ones at our school who hadn't gone in for the just-launched Air Jordans and their countless imitations. The fact that we stuck with our thin, thrifty Chucks assured us that we were different, cool, somewhere between the jocks and the drama kids. So did the fact that we could change colors whenever it was time for a new pair and scrawl the names of our favorite bands on the white toe caps. The Converse Cousins walked the grounds of Westlake Elementary proudly (albeit without much in the way of arch support), knowing we followed in the footsteps of unfuckwithable stars from Larry Bird to Ice Cube to the Ramones.
And now, along comes a development both simple and profound: after almost a century of not fixing what was never broke, Converse introduces the Chuck Taylor All Star II, a model that mostly looks the same on the outside (the biggest giveaways are the premium canvas, the subtly retooled eyelets and the patch, now stitched on instead of painted) but that boasts a handful of minutely conceived internal tweaks that give each pair the feel of a Nike. A cushy Lunarlon footbed, a padded, no-slip tongue and a breathable microsuede lining are just a few of the innovations design director Damion Silver and his team obsessed over. Their goal: to raise feel and style to the same timeless level; to make cool-kids of all ages a little surer on their feet.
