An unbothered, radically totally different, equal however reverse response to rap’s podcast bros
Vic Mensa is on the vanguard of commentators reclaiming areas for radical Black custom within the spheres of hip-hop discourse.
Courtesy of The Vic Mensa Present
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Courtesy of The Vic Mensa Present
In the course of Vic Mensa’s sit-down with Rapsody on the third episode of The Vic Mensa Present, the rapper-turned-podcaster recalled “probably the most quintessential moments in Black thought.” He was paying reverence to a 1971 dialog between poet Nikki Giovanni and author James Baldwin. Although that dialogue occurred greater than 50 years in the past, the second has grow to be an ever-present meme lately for embodying the gender hole that may make Black love and Black survival really feel like contradictory pursuits.
Whereas ruminating over that traditional change, Rapsody and Mensa stumble onto a brand new query: “The place do Black males go to cry?” To which Mensa admits he finds refuge alone within the bathe. “You’ve got been satisfied that vulnerability is weak,” he says. “And also you develop and also you notice that it was a rattling lie — that having vulnerability is much stronger than having some false machismo masculinity.”
In that second, Rapsody casually rises and reaches over to wipe the tears streaming down Mensa’s face. “I am glad that you can cry my brother,” she responds. And with that, I needed to hit pause simply to register what occurred. It is acquired to be essentially the most tender and susceptible change on a podcast I’ve ever witnessed.
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For at the least a decade now, podcasts have felt like rap’s closing frontier. Or an early retirement dwelling for rappers with no pension parlaying their onstage abilities into sideshow hosts. The medium launched by the unique hip-hop podcast Juan Ep and its up to date The Fight Jack Present gave method to a technology that cooked down the unique system, like crack, and distilled it to its lowest frequent denominator. Longform interviews and deep liner notes principally gave method to trash discuss, road gossip and celebrity-driven opinions dredged from our broader cultural obsession with fame, energy and success.
In an area presently overrun by chatty patties, as Dame Sprint famously declared, the freshest podders on scorching mics are providing a counterweight to rap’s reigning manosphere of podcast bros. I like to think about them because the podcast bruhs — an ideological different to the reasonably conservative mainstream. Just like the distinction between rage-baiting and righteously raging in opposition to the machine. If one finish is dominated by two of the highest-paid podcasters ranked by Forbes, Joe Budden and Charlamagne tha God, the opposite facet is propped up by the likes of everyman Deante Kyle, a relative newcomer who solely stop his truck driving gig a yr in the past to host the Grits & Eggs Podcast full-time.
Nonetheless, content material is large enterprise. Even in a beleaguered trade, Charlemagne tha God secured a $200 million bag. His Black Impact joint partnership with iHeart Podcasts now counts almost 50 titles amongst a focused roster it rolls out with the tempo of a deep-pocketed main label within the ’90s. Podcasting has additionally grow to be an extension of the artwork type. Or efficiency artwork, per se. When Jadakiss throws a flag on his co-host Fats Joe’s flagrant fouls, we’re all in on the gag. What cats like Mensa, Deante Kyle, and even scholar Marc Lamont Hill are delivering is a sort of efficiency, too. (Detractors would possibly even name them “performative.”) However their roles are steeped in a Black liberation politic that’s equal components delicate, radical and intersectional. Even when they’re only a blip on the dial of poisonous, misogynistic, materialistic content material, they are a blip price watching.
The Rapsody episode wasn’t Mensa’s first intimate second with a visitor. The primary one occurred when he confided via tears to his buddy Likelihood the Rapper how a lot it harm him — and his pockets — when Likelihood determined in opposition to inviting Vic on tour years in the past. Likelihood did not attempt to wipe away these tears like Rapsody, however he did take a beat to empathize with Vic and apologize.
Toxicity loves firm, and firms love cashing in on the contagion with zero regard for its dangerous results. Largely what these pods present is a crucial voice in a area the place something apart from senseless reward is seen as knocking the hustle.
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Like a 5 Percenter with the supply of a Southern preacher, Kyle’s community-minded commentary is uncut and unforgiving. Black celebrities get zero passes. When Jay-Z’s boycott-busting, unique vinyl take care of Goal backfired this summer season, Kyle pulled no punches. “I do not know an excessive amount of about Jay-Z personally,” he mentioned. “I’ll inform you this. The n**** hates a protest.” Even LeBron’s current $15 million Polymarket deal, which can maintain him afloat greater than his NBA paycheck this yr, got here underneath Kyle’s crosshairs. “Primarily, what LeBron James does is he helps usher within the latest technology of junkies,” he mentioned on an episode titled “Polymarket Pimps.”
Mensa’s podcast is a derivative of the heavily-parodied, viral “Orange Tree” shorts that discovered him kicking anti-capitalist ballistics in a tank-top surrounded by citrus. His lineup of friends spotlight a cross-section of Black tradition from rap-adjacent to queer-friendly, together with like-minded podcaster Van Lathan and singer Durand Bernarr. Mensa has additionally spoken concerning the problem of securing funding for his present whereas avoiding playing’s sweeping advertising and marketing push. In the meantime, Joe Budden reveals no disgrace in pitching his largest sponsor, the prediction market website Prize Picks, throughout paid advertorials each episode.
However Budden clearly senses a shift, too. In 2024, he made the strategic transfer so as to add Hill to his present’s panel of homies and trade cronies. Every time the CUNY professor rushes to some notable girl’s protection, his sofa mates cringe a lot that it is grow to be a predictable JBP bit. Clearly, he challenges the pod — and its tens of millions of month-to-month listeners and viewers — along with his feminist, abolitionist views. Whereas there is no metric to measure Hill’s optimistic affect, the transfer itself suggests how a lot Budden acknowledges that his weekly conversations — which he clearly sees as a microcosm of the tradition — are in determined want of extra intersectional thought.
In an period of anti-wokeness, it is refreshing to search out just a few bruhs who refuse to sleepwalk.
These three figures alone aren’t the whole checklist, nor are they essentially indicative of a pattern. Nevertheless, they make up a vanguard (together with leftist streamers and YouTube essayists) that appears to be rising up in significant corners of the Web to assist reclaim some area for the Black radical custom. The youthful audiences they serve are down to have interaction within the form of dialogue and concepts that grounded forebears like Baldwin and Giovanni. Solely as soon as we begin to have these conversations extra freely and overtly can we decolonize our minds, too.
