Vic Spencer has spent close to two decades building a reputation as one of underground rap's most reliably industrious voices, a Chicago mic-slinger who treats sheer output as a style in itself. By the time Being The Bigger Person Sucks landed in December 2024, it was already his fourth full-length of the year, not a victory lap so much as another shift clocked.
The title alone tells you where his head is at.
Where much of Spencer's catalogue runs on a perseverance-through-adversity current, this record chooses spite over grace, giving in, as its own framing has it, to the inner villain. That swerve makes more sense once you know his history: raised largely inside the Illinois foster care system after his parents' addiction pulled them out of the picture, Spencer built his earliest reputation rapping DCFS forums as part of Uhlich Voices, a group whose message was built on positivity.
Rap as a way out doesn't always stay clean, and Spencer has spent his solo career complicating the story he was first handed.
Twelve tracks produced piecemeal by a rotating cast, among them Tall Black Guy, Sovren, The Standouts, Earl Saga and Big Ghost, mixed and mastered by Doc Da Mindbenda, the record moves the way most Spencer albums do: fast, loose, assembled from whichever beat happened to land in his inbox that stretch of the year. The song titles do plenty of the work themselves, Lupe Fiasco's Weed Stash, 1994 Porsche Carrera, Charlet's Web, Chicago in-jokes and pop-culture debris set next to bars about a childhood that offered him basketball or rap and no third option.
Guests come and go without ceremony. Nickelus F turns up on Obituary, Estee Nack closes out Rusty Auditions, Blvck Spvde doubles as producer and rapper on Michelin Tires Delight. It's the same working method that carried him through the Psychological Cheat Sheet series with producer August Fanon, and through the long-running Spencer For Higher collaboration with Birmingham producer Sonnyjim: find someone whose beats fit, keep the tape rolling, sort the sequencing out later.
None of that makes Being The Bigger Person Sucks his tidiest release. Where the Psychological Cheat Sheet records thrive on Fanon's single, brooding palette, this one is scattershot by design, closer to a mixtape than a statement, and it shows. But scattershot has always been part of the method, going back to a teenager tracking whole songs in one take on a karaoke machine because that was the equipment available to him. From Rolling Stone's 2015 "Artists You Need to Know" list through recorded verses alongside Sean Price, Ghostface Killah and Twista, the pace hasn't slowed. The villain talk is new. The work ethic behind it has never once let up.
