Big Sean: Talk the Talk
Big Sean, Sean Michael Leonard Anderson, one of my top 5 favourite artists. Why do I like him so much? It's the same reason I like J. Cole, Kendrick, Chance, Childish Gambino. Their music - their art - has range. They talk about love. They talk about pressing issues such as race; growing up black in America and being black in America. Not just Trump’s America.
Big Sean has a range that can be seen through many of his songs, His flow has a uniqueness where in he can go from rapping about being black and struggles with the cops to rapping about being a rapper in love. He does this perfectly in the second verse of ‘Memories’ in which he raps:
Are you willing to give up what you love for who you love
Or lose your girlfriend to groupie love
Everywhere I go I get a group of hugs
That's what happens when they need connections and you the plug
How many trends you gotta set til' you considered great?
How many missed calls til' you considered fake?
How many dreams before its considered fate?
I’m eating in a world where I’m considered bait
A workaholic addicted to bills
Big Sean offers hope and resilience. Much like J. Cole and Kendrick. He’s proven to be unapologetic in his lyricism, an appropriate example of this would be the line from his song with Metro Boomin ‘Savage Time’ inviting former President Barack Obama to drink the water from Flint, Michigan:
“I'mma take that water from Flint, and I'mma go up there to D.C
I'mma make the president drink, he wouldn't even let it touch his sink”
Being a Detroit native Big Sean has a multitude of topics to rap about and create verses about, and he does so very well, however what Sean Michael Leonard Anderson should be getting the most credit for is the fact that he knows that all the stuff that’s happening in America is bigger than him, that love is bigger than him.
And in our search for a scapegoat in the Hip-Hop landscape - which Sean tends to be - we forget gems such as this:
I gotta get on the road
I gotta be the one chose
I gotta come back and tell the greatest story they never told
This must be the feeling that you get when you know you close
And you know it's a way in even when the doors are closed
And realize this shit is bigger than me yeah
Big Sean relays a confidence, no, almost duty to present himself as the one who has to rap for his city, for his notoriety, because he acknowledges the many before him who were unable to tell their stories or finish telling their stories. It is not just about the fame and the notoriety associated with the name ‘Big Sean’.