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Ology Exclusive Interview: Vakill Discusses 'Armor of God'

Q: The album opens with a skit of a death and resurrection. What inspired you to use these themes?

A: They just had to do with the nature of how long it took the project to get done. I felt like I had a rebirth, dying and coming back, you know what I mean. A five year hiatus is kind of long, so it kind of felt like reinvention. As you go on, you realize it’s a lot more deeper than that, but that’s pretty much the basis of why I started it the way I started it.

Q: Could you define what the Armor of God is?

A: We went through hell and back to get this project done. That’s the reason why it took so long. Originally, the album was going to be titled ‘V for Vendetta,’ and it was going to be borderline straight indie gangsta rap, and I was just going to go crazy. I felt I was in a space where everything had gotten so boring. The game got kind of docile. Rap used to be great. Rap used to be vocal motion, it used to break something out, and everything got so party, it got stuck.

I wanted to bring some ruckus, so I was going to make the album as grimy as I could make it, but during the course of doing that, every time I felt like I was into the feed grinder with it. Something would have happened to where we just couldn’t get this record done. I ended up blowing out my vocal chords to record this album, so I had to sit back and say nothing and do nothing. When you sit down and say nothing and do nothing, you hear things, you hear your consciousness speak—it may be God speaking to you—but something told me ‘Va, you’re getting a little too gooned out. You need to drop some jewels.’ I sat back with the idea and realized that I really needed to drop some jams on it, so the whole theme changed to the record. I wanted to reshuffle the deck a little bit. I went back in, came back with some strong messages to put on the album, and I felt like it was God talking to me, like ‘If you put this song on there for me, I’ll bless you by letting this album come out,’ so that’s where it came from. It’s like the album’s got a cloak around it, it got like a cloak of invincibility.

Q: On the song “Mean Mug Muzik” you say "...this is that new Chicago gangster. That old sh*t is out." Could you explain more about that?