Artist To watch In 2014 # 13 Vic Mensa (Love this kid right here)

Vic Mensa

Age: 20
From: Chicago, IL
Label: N/A

Before Chance The Rapper, before Chief Keef, before even his own group Kids These Days, Vic Mensa was a teenaged rapper who earned the attention of major label suits and seemed on the verge of breaking out. Kids These Days performed at Lollapalooza in 2011 and gathered attention from critics and big names like Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, who produced their debut album Traphouse Rock, but in the year-plus that it took to craft the album, the tensions within the group (and Chicago's growing profile outside of it) caused the Kids to rupture.

Finally liberated, Vic dropped an impressive 2013 solo project, Innanetape, which was enough to establish him as a promising new national artist, although perhaps not enough to quite disentangle himself from Chance's suddenly looming shadow.

"I still get jealous of Vic," Chance spit on his song "Acid Rain," "And Vic still gets jealous of me," capturing in two sentences the dynamic of these friends and artists. Even before Chance was a known commodity, Vic had pioneered the lane he capitalized on: a bit streetwise, a bit of a backpacker, and 100% pure talent, Vic has the ambitions and abilities to make himself a major player in 2014—assuming he can make a statement that puts him out in front of his competition. —David Drake

Blaine