By August BrownOriginal Source: latimes.com

Back in December, in front of a sold-out audience at the Forum awaiting Grammy front-runner Jay-Z, opening act and rapper Vic Mensa vaulted onstage. Dressed in punky red leather, he was boisterous and triumphant, the show a crowning achievement in his career.

But underneath the bravado were lacerating lyrics about depression and drug addiction.

"In the cyclone of my own addiction," he rapped on his song "Wings."

"The voices in my head keep talking… / 'You'll never be good enough…you never was / …You hurt everyone around you, you're impossible to love / …I wish you were never born, we would all be better for it / …You're still a drug addict, you're nothing without your medicine / Go and run to your sedative, you can't run forever, Vic.'"

Hip-hop artists Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar and Logic will likely dominate the top Grammy categories, doing so in a year the genre went deep into issues of mental health, drug addiction and suicide — topics that have long been present below the surface. Some acts, such as...click here to continue reading