INNANETAPE: Thirteen Years of Loading

The Vic Mensa Show

Vic Mensa reflects on the creation and legacy of his 2013 mixtape *The Innanet Tape*, detailing how the breakup of his high school band, Kids These Days, catalyzed a deeply personal and

Key takeaways

• The breakup of Kids These Days left Vic Mensa emotionally devastated, directly inspiring him to channel his grief into *The Innanet Tape* as a form of therapeutic affirmation.
• Mensa wrote nearly every track while under the influence of mushrooms, resulting in dense lyricism and psychedelic production that defied conventional commercial rap formulas.

Main topics

• Kids These Days breakup and emotional fallout
• Psychedelic songwriting process and mushroom inspiration

Notable quotes

"Internet Tape was dreamed into existence from my parents' basement. I took a hero dose of mushrooms one day and I convinced myself I am the internet."

Conclusion

The episode serves as both a retrospective on a pivotal moment in Vic Mensa's career and a testament

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) Internet Tape was dreamed into existence from my parents' basement. I took a hero dose of mushrooms one day and I convinced myself I am the internet. I was high as fuck. Speaker 2 (0:31) Before Speaker 3 (0:32) I put out the internet tape, I was in a group called Kids These Days. This was my high school band, maybe from about age 15 until damn near age 19. And we actually covered this in the Chance episode that the split of that band had an enormous emotional impact on me. What we covered was that a lot of those band members went on to play with Chance and I felt like hella fucking hurt and betrayed and just disillusioned and Fake loss for a second because the band broke up and literally the next day Speaker 3 (1:12) I got a call that they were starting a new band. There was everybody except me. So I was like emotionally fucked up about that. And also just being maybe 18, having poured so much into the band, I had met No I.D. when I was maybe 16. He came to Chicago and wanted to sign me, do albums with me. And I was like, man, it's this band. You know, you got to get the band. You want me? You got to Speaker 2 (1:41) get the band. Speaker 3 (1:42) So when the band split, I felt a wreck. And out of that was what came to Internet Tape because I was. Speaker 3 (1:54) overcome with emotion that I could only make music out of. It was the only thing I could do with all of that heaviness was make music. And it just became very vibrant and bright and loving and beautiful music because I didn't really feel that way. And it was statements of affirmation to myself. So, you know. Black is beautiful to give you what you need, would make you love it. Like, you're amazing. The Speaker 2 (2:23) things that I didn't really necessarily feel in honest Speaker 3 (2:27) or in earnest were the words that I put into the music. Speaker 3 (2:33) I was also coming out of that period of intense musicality. This band was jazz, it was funk, it was rock. Speaker 3 (2:42) you know, blues, all this shit at once. And so it had turned me out musically. So I'm with like straight jazz kids, like kids that actually went to band camp. You know how they be like this one time at band camp? This Speaker 1 (2:55) one time at band camp? Speaker 3 (2:57) Like all my homies in that band, not that they was lames, but they did go to band camp. Like, and that opened my musical mind so much. So I'd been covering records like Speaker 3 (3:12) Everything from Stevie Wonder, what would that be, Sir Duke. We would interpolate horn breakdown. We would interpolate that with other records like Sly Stone and then I would rap over those. Or James Brown, It's a Man's World. Or D'Angelo, Africa. Or the Pixies, Where Is My Mind. um or like La Tigra. I ended up sampling La Tigra on my first album. It was just so eclectic because I had been inside of this incredibly eclectic musical community. You know what I'm saying? And even that sample of La Tigra, sort of the first track on the internet tape is called Welcome to Internet. It's the intro. Speaker 2 (4:04) I'd like to welcome everybody to the internet. Tune in. Love on. Speaker 3 (4:10) It's a beat that I made while I was on tour with Kizz these days. That was when I was making beats on Machine, I think. And I sampled La Tigra, which is this feminist punk group led by Kathleen Hanna. Speaker 2 (4:24) I think I'm probably the only nigga to ever sample La Tigra. Correct me if I'm wrong. Speaker 3 (4:35) But I want to claim that because La Tigra is hard as fuck. Speaker 3 (4:43) That was just part of the magic of it to me part of the alchemy was like Speaker 3 (4:47) flipping La Tigra a song away from like Redman and Method Man. I just felt like I was doing something kind of different. And a lot of that was inspired by Kizzy's days. What did I have to prove with my first