On Vic Mensa’s phone, the most important app is not a social network, a streaming platform, or a professional music production tool. It is Voice Memos. The Chicago rapper, actor, and podcaster points to it as the starting point for many of his ideas: song drafts, cues for longer lyrics, notes recorded at odd hours, and even phrases spoken by his son that he doesn't want to let fade away.
The answer comes in an interview published by The Verge on October 31, 2026, in which Mensa briefly reflects on his relationship with the digital tools that accompany a career built on multiple fronts. His choice carries the weight of a statement of method: before turning an insight into a song, a public reflection, or a project, one has to be able to capture it. For him, that act coincides with hitting record.
“It all starts there,” he explains when talking about Voice Memos. The phone, he adds, is both a continuous source of distractions and the place where this application retains a more direct purpose: hitting record before a thought dissipates. He therefore does not describe the app as an orderly archive or software intended for the final stages of work. Rather, he describes it as an entryway, ready to use at the least plannable moment of the day.
An audio notebook inside the smartphone
The significance of Voice Memos in Mensa’s story lies precisely in its simplicity. A voice recording app can capture a sketched melody, a phrase, a rhythmic cadence, a reminder, or an observation still too unformed to fit into a document. It doesn't demand an immediate decision on what form that idea will take, nor does it require interrupting what you are doing to move into a more structured work environment.
For an artist who balances music, acting, podcasting, an online presence, activism, and entrepreneurial ventures, the speed of capture becomes an integral part of the process. Musically, Mensa is also known for the mixtape Innanetape, which only arrived on major streaming services in September, and for the house-influenced single “Down On My Luck”. He has also appeared in the series The Chi and Bel-Air and hosts The Vic Mensa Show. These are different paths, but throughout the interview, voice recording emerges as a practical point of contact: a place to leave a trace before the idea is absorbed by another activity.
The distinction is also significant on a cultural level. Smartphones are often associated with constant interruption: feeds, messages, notifications, and demands for attention compete for every available minute. Mensa does not deny this dimension; in fact, he calls it out directly. Yet within that same “rectangular box,” he identifies a space he still considers authentic, because it is designed to preserve a voice without forcing it to immediately become public content.
Before publishing, there is raw material
Mensa’s case does not suggest a universal formula for creativity, nor does it turn a single app into a solution. However, it shows just how much the less visible phase of cultural work matters: the stage where an idea is not yet a finished song, a post, an episode, or a fully formed stance. In his description, Voice Memos is useful precisely because it can hold incomplete, private, and even ephemeral material without forcing it into a presentation.
This function takes on particular value within the platform ecosystem. Instagram is the social platform Mensa says he uses most often, “for better or worse,” and the one where his public voice has found the most space. His recurring video format—peeling an orange and thinking out loud—stems from a recognizable online presence. Yet the interview clearly separates that level of exposure from the preceding phase: not everything that is recorded is meant to circulate, nor should it be.
Voice recording can thus serve as a middle ground between memory and publication. On one hand, it ensures you do not have to rely entirely on recollection; on the other, it keeps every insight from having to be immediately turned into public-facing material. For those working with words, sounds, or images, this separation can be more important than the technical complexity of the tool being used.
Mensa's account also includes notes tied to family life, such as the little things said by his son. It is a detail that shifts the conversation beyond productivity. A smartphone's archive does not just gather ideas to develop or monetize: it can safeguard personal moments, everyday observations, and traces meant to remain just that. The same action—recording—holds creative work and private memory together.
The limits of an instant archive
Immediacy does not eliminate the medium's shortcomings. Recording everything is not the same as finding everything, nor does it guarantee that every note will be listened to again or turned into a project. A voice memo archive can grow rapidly and become unwieldy; the ease of saving a fragment does not replace the subsequent work of selection, development, and organization.
This is precisely why Mensa's account should be read for what it is: the description of a personal habit, not the promotion of a rigid methodology. Voice Memos serves him because it reduces the distance between the emergence of a thought and the ability to capture it. It says nothing, however, about how those recordings are subsequently cataloged, processed, or shared. The decisive creative phase can take place long after the first tap on the record button.
There is also another, more general limitation: the smartphone remains the environment of distractions that Mensa himself acknowledges. The very same screen that offers an ever-present recorder can instantly lead back to messages, feeds, and notifications. In other words, the tool's usefulness does not depend solely on the app, but on how it is used and the ability to carve out a moment to truly listen to what has been saved.
For now, there is no announcement of a new feature, a partnership with Apple, or a product tied to this habit. The news is smaller and, perhaps for that reason, more relatable: an artist accustomed to moving between different mediums points to an essential app as his most reliable creative infrastructure. In an industry often focused on the most advanced tools, Mensa brings the focus back to the initial step: giving an idea the time to exist, at least in the form of a recorded voice.
