A CONVERSATION WITH... V.I.C
Missed Reading and Leeds 2025? We got your back with our 13 artists to watch. Next up is V.I.C. — you might have seen him across your FYP with his song ‘Wasteman’ but he’s been grinding for years to be where he is now. This is only the start.
I go by the name of VIC and I'm a hip-hop artist.
What drew you to making music? You’ve talked on Instagram about your four-part plan, but what was that moment that made you fall in love with it?
I grew up in Nigeria. My parents were pastors at a church, so I always used to sing at church. Actually, my brother used to sing in church and I used to rap. It's always been part of my family. My mum told me that her brother used to sing, too. She used to sing around the house. Melody was something that just came naturally to me. I think it was when I was 15 or 16 that I really started watching a lot of artists perform. I remember one day that I was watching J. Cole on YouTube. I couldn’t go to concerts, so all I could do was watch concert videos online. He did this thing where he was performing and he got everybody to put their phone lights up. It was a sea of lights. From that day, I just started writing music and kept writing it to see what would happen. I just wanna be able to perform it and have that moment. I was never good at writing lyrics, but I was good at melodies. When I got to uni, I started playing it out on Instagram with freestyles every week. TikTok happened and lockdown happened. At first, I wasn't going to do it. My brother pointed out that people don't have to know you to follow you. If you're good, people follow. And that’s how I got started.
Speaking of writing and your songs, we do a thing called ‘Smash, Marry, Kill’ with your own songs.
I will say smash ‘Wasteman’, just cause it's the biggest. Marry ‘Diamonds’, and kill ‘Money up’. A lot of people love ‘Money up’, but I don’t like it. I know the head state I was in when I wrote it and it wasn’t the best.
Now that you're at Reading after all this time honing your craft, how are you feeling about being here?
I'm so excited. I just can't wait to perform. The whole reason I did all of this was to perform and have that moment with people. You never get that on social media; they can just be numbers. But in places like this, you get to put a face on it. That’s so beautiful to me. I’m always excited to perform again.
What’s the question that you wish you got asked in interviews?
‘What's your creative process like?’ I'm a nerd for music, I’m such a nerd. This time last year was when I first realised that Genius broke down people's lyrics. Now I love writing down people’s lyrics and looking at the breakdowns. I want to understand how their minds work. Artists like J.Cole and Kendrick, I want to understand what makes them be thinking as deep as they do. Or studying their creative directors, like Dave Free, who works with Kendrick. Understanding why they chose that, how they make their artistic world, and understanding the world they created. I never used to do that in the past, but now I’ve been spending more time nerding out about music.
We've also been doing a thing where we have an artist leave a question for another artist. The question that got left for you was, ‘What was your first ever music festival you went to and how did it impact you?’
You know what? The first ever music festival I went to was Leeds Festival, because I performed there. I always had this thing in my mind where I thought that I'm not gonna go to one until I can perform at one. It started off because my parents didn't allow us to go to shows and festivals, but then as I got older, the passion drove me. In 2022, when we finally got booked for Reading and Leeds, it was such a beautiful moment. I do wish I had been able to experience festivals when I was younger, but it's still something great now.
What's the question that you'd leave for another artist?
What would make you hang up your boots for music? For me, it’s if I die. I wanna have one of those careers where it's like, ‘Yo, he's 70/80 years old and he's still performing and packing out the stages.’
You've had a lot of moments of joy that you’ve shared, but what's one that you want to emphasise?
When ‘A Teen’ came back. You're in the creative world, and there are certain things you can't write. But the story of it is so powerful. You're just a piece in that story that's going to happen either way. And I feel like that's what ‘A Teen’ was because I wrote ‘A Teen’ about myself when I was 16, trying to make it into the industry. I was trying to make something out of myself. That was the song that blew up and gave me that opportunity. The song is talking about how there were so many blocks trying to stop it. In 2020, that was the song that went on FIFA, and it got me my first festival.
But in 2023, it got taken down thanks to copyright. It was the only thing that was allowing me to continue making music. It wasn’t only about the song. It built a community of people. I didn't know how it was gonna come back and two weeks ago, the song came back. It was a moment that I could share with the audience and everybody who supported the song. I was able to share my whole journey and people on social media can follow it.
It‘s a story that tells itself, it's bigger than a song. It's bigger than one person.