To mark the release of his latest album, I Decided., Big Sean went to Twitter to get out this little message: “I know what it feels like to be the underdog, to know you’re full potential and it not be recognized. All I can say is keep going, earn it!”
Sean Michael Leonard Anderson, or Big Sean for short, arrived last decade under the tutelage of Kanye West. Often thought to be a lightweight Kanye, and compared to contemporaries like Drake and Kid Cudi, the Detroit native appeared to lack a distinct vision. He did have a worldview, but it was just one that was meeker, and more humbled than is traditionally accepted for top tier rap stars.
Work, imbued with a middle-America working class hustle, drives much of Sean’s music. His sophomore album, Hall of Fame, stressed that fact on the song 10 2 10 and even one of his early crossover hits was simply titled I Do It. A loud supporter of his hometown of Detroit, even as the city is often the butt of jokes and national shame, the rapper finds pride in offering his own hard grinded success story to those that doubted his city. He’s retold that origin myth across albums – a similar narrative arc started his first two album – but each retelling adds additional chapters. That’s what pushes him on Deserve It, from his 2015 album, Dark Sky Paradise, to retrace the steps of impressing Kanye to driving across the valleys of California valleys reflecting back on his success.
But success remains the final goal of the endless grinding. That’s the sad irony his best single, 2012’s Guap, which opened with the “I’ve been grinding all goddamn year and I just got my check / I’m gonna spend it on me” and even featured a Big Pimpin-esque video shot in downtown Detroit didn’t connect with audiences like his other songs. Humility seemed to remain a major selling point, even for a rapper who had been predicted to become “the best rapper of all-time” by Kanye West. Still an eternal optimist, late last year he released Bounce Back, which slowly scraped its way into the Billboard Top 20. The song’s message, while not directly about his work ethic, the hook could be the thesis of all his work: “Last night took I took an L / But tonight I bounce back.”
I Decided. shows another another step for Big Sean, as with a little bit of age, he’s looking towards issues of the world that beyond his luxury hotel suite. “My dad from Louisiana, man the smallest town / Where if they know you brown, they might hold you down / And even hose you down, man,” Sean raps on Light, an early album cut and one of the many references on the album of the history of tension between the black community and law enforcement. Where Drake, especially on record, is aggressively apolitical, Big Sean is not shrinking from the spotlight that fame places on him, as he rhymes on No Favors, “The D to Flint who get sick with lead / Others get the hit with the laugh / From where they need a handout / But they tell you put hands up.”
Even though Kanye’s own beginnings as a producer-turned-rapper were decidedly humble, once Sean was introduced to West, the old Kanye was long gone. West was known, even expected, to speak his mind whenever presented with the opportunity, but Sean’s ambitions, musically and politically, looked modest next to his midwestern mentor. Whereas the Chicagoan was and remains politically outspoken, Big Sean operated with smaller gestures. Instead of going on TV and saying that George Bush “doesn’t care about black people”, Sean looked home and raised money for the ongoing water crisis in Flint, Michigan. Big Sean was fine letting his actions do the talking, but I Decided. shows that his words can also fall in line.
