Bravery, family and living healthy: How Big Sean bounced back from suicidal thoughts
Big Sean has always been about motivation in his lyrics. Whether it’s returning from a loss on ‘Bounce Back’ or making sacrifices for a successful career on ‘Sacrifices’, his catalogue isn’t short of them. But the rapper giving others advice is the same person, beneath it all, going through individual troubles.
The Detroit rapper has always been publicly confident through hit singles and dating superstars like Ariana Grande, but he had a candid moment in 2020. In his song ‘Deep Reverence’, a collaboration with Nipsey Hussle from his Detroit 2 album, he opened up about his battles with anxiety and depression.
Sean goes into detail about his thoughts and emotions, explaining how he didn’t know how to deal with anxiety. He confesses that he had a gun beside him and considered ending it all based on the suicidal thoughts inside his head.
He raps, “In high school, I learned chemistry, biology/ But not how to cope with anxiety/ Or how I could feel like I’m by myself on an island/ With depression on all sides of me/ With a Glock seventeen right on the side of me/ Look, I ain’t think I had the thought of suicide in me/ Until life showed me all these different sides of me/ Too many times I thought the reaper was outside for me/ And how the fuck it’s people that never met me that hate me?”
Sean revealed that his thoughts about suicide went as far as thinking about how his family would live without him, being looked after with his career earnings. At this point, due to stress, he realised he needed to make some changes in his life.
“I for sure contemplated suicide a lot of times, having guns in my hand, feeling it for real,” he admitted on One Question One Mike. “Planning it out to the point where I said, ‘Hey, if I do kill myself, at least my family will get this amount of money. I did this already.’ Because I was just stressed out and not happy. I realised that, ‘OK, I need to stop everything I’m doing and figure this out or I’m going to self-destruct.’”
Sean is familiar with material things, rapping about everything from private jets to Jesus piece chains. But the mental health issues he experienced made him realise that nothing matters more than having his mind straight.
“When I say I had a Glock 17 in my hand, I really did,” he told CBC. “I don’t know why I was feeling like that, but I couldn’t stop feeling like it. It was deep. And it taught me that all these conditional things are just that. You think you want the watch or the car and all that, right? But those things get old so quick.”
From there, he focused on living a healthy lifestyle, including exercise, and taking a break from constantly touring to concentrate on his music. Working out for at least one hour daily brought peace into his life. Sean believes his inability to process his emotions was passed down from his grandparents.
“My grandma was one of the first female Black captains in World War II, and my grandad was in World War II as well,” he explained. “So they were amazing people, but they didn’t know how to express their emotions, and it trickled down, I feel like, to me. So I got confused when I got older and had all these emotions just pent up inside of me and had to figure it out.”