Rapper Vic Mensa on Being an Ally After Orlando

During Chicago's Pride weekend, at an LGBT party in Chicago called Queen! Sunday, rapper Vic Mensa premiered a new, LGBT-inclusive track,"Free Love."

Vic Mensa released the track with a personal note on social media, where he said that he didn't know any gay people growing up. He said he's always been in support of LGBT rights, but he's never felt personally attached or felt "like it was my battle to fight." That changed when a member of his family came out as queer, he said.

"It made me uncomfortable at first. And that's good," he wrote in the note. "We have to be removed from our comfort zone to be able to grow." The rapper wrote that he felt compelled to do something to show his support for LGBT people and asked his followers to do the same:

"Looking at the world around me, I realize now that as a creature of love, the battles of all people fighting to love are also mine. And I will stand with them. Will you?"

The rapper referenced the Orlando mass shooting and said he couldn't feel "indifferent about something that was so important to people I love."

"Free Love" features Malik Yusef, Lil B, queer singer Halsey, and queer rapper Le1f. Mensa is selling "Free Love" T-shirts for $50, and a portion of the proceeds will go to the Orlando victims and their families, he announced on Twitter today.

It's now been two weeks since the Orlando tragedy, and Mensa notes how fast current events become a thing of the past on social media. "I don't wanna wait too long / Til I'm wrinkling and my body aching / And the newspapers move on." Mensa also refers to North Carolina's House Bill 2 and how the state restricts restroom use by transgender people.

He's not the only hip-hop artist to speak out about Orlando recently. R&B singer and member of hip-hop collective Odd Future Frank Ocean published a note recently in which he discussed how the Orlando attack affected him. The rapper Kid Cudi published a series of tweets asking the hip-hop community to show more support to LGBT people in the wake of the tragedy.

Read Mensa's full note here.

Listen to the song below.