Vic Mensa’s life story unfurls on Memories on 47th St, a tour of the rapper’s upbringing in Chicago. Lyrically dextrous, some of it is familiar from testimonies past: absent father, “kicked out of kindergarten”, police brutality, tagging graffiti; someone HIV-positive shoots up. Then Mensa falls from a bridge and gets a huge electric shock sneaking into Lollapalooza. This is a rapper who bristles with righteous anger and no little humour, dramatising heists (Heaven on Earth) and raging at self-medication. But like his friend, Chance the Rapper, Mensa has a wider brief on his debut album proper than hood reportage; previous songs have hopped around topics and genres(dance music, bombastic Kanye collaborations; here are arresting departures like the slow, hyper-modern torch song Coffee & Cigarettes or the closing electronic rock ballad Rage.
