The one decision Big Sean will always regret: “Wherever he was in the world, I would go”
Former G.O.O.D. Music artist Big Sean is undeniably one of the most prominent contemporary rap artists from Detroit. Raised by his mother, a school teacher, and his grandmother, the rapper caught the eye of Kanye West after Big Sean was brave enough to approach him at a radio station.
Big Sean met West in 2005 at the headquarters of Detroit’s WDKL 102.7 radio station. Here, he rapped for the super producer and left his demo with Kanye. Exactly two years later, West signed Big Sean to G.O.O.D. Music, and over the years, the two have worked together extensively, leading to Big Sean becoming a household name.
As one of only a handful of contemporary hip-hop artists from Detroit, Sean has made a significant impact, and his discography boasts an eight-time platinum album, Dark Sky Paradise — just one of many chart-topping projects the emcee has released. However, his musical journey hasn’t been all rosy. In fact, he has made a number of mistakes, especially early in his career.
Although he was offered the opportunity of a lifetime as a signee of G.O.O.D. Music, Big Sean began to find out that even with the backing of musical genius Kanye West, his success was growing any greater, and his popularity was, if anything, waning by the end of the 2010s.
In hindsight, Big Sean once admitted he knew why his career didn’t improve and controversially told Noreaga and DJ EFN on the Drink Champs podcast that signing with Kanye West was “a terrible decision, financially.”
In 2022, during his public-facing meltdown, for no apparent reason, Kanye West told the hosts of Drink Champs that signing Big Sean was the worst thing he ever did and, understandably,” Big Sean was not happy when he heard this, considering all the work he had done with the label.
He continued, “So, I’m the only artist who put out five albums under G.O.O.D. Music. I’m the only artist who put out back-to-back No. 1s, platinum albums, and double platinum albums.” Big Sean admitted that although being signed to West changed his life, he was too subservient to the Graduation creator and suggested that he was too dutiful to Kanye and should have focused more on how he could make business moves without West.
Unveiling how slavish he was with Kanye, Sean recalled, “Every time Kanye called on me, every single time, no matter what I was doing, within one day, I was wherever he was at, bro. Whether it was to contribute in the studio, to contribute a line, or to write a verse for him, sometimes, he’d take parts of the verse, maybe the whole verse.”
But this wasn’t the full extent of his dedication, he added, “Wherever he was in the world, I would go. I travelled around the world for this man every time he called. And have done that and not asked for publishing a lot of the time.”
Big Sean admitted that it was a terrible financial decision to sign to G.O.O.D. Music because he spent more time travelling around the world making music for West than in the studio making his own material and earning money from shows.