ALBUM: I Decided.
ARTIST: Big Sean
RATING: 6.00/10.00
The Artist:
It doesn’t take J. Cole saying, “[b]uncha words they ain’t saying s**t I hate these rappers, especially the immature eight week rappers. Lil’ whatever, just another short bus rapper, fake drug dealers turned tour bus trappers,” to understand that the current state of rap music is fundamentally fractured. It seems that over the past five years a significant rift has developed within the rap industry, pitting the likes of J. Cole, Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West, Chance The Rapper and the rest of the artists who use calculated wordplay as a medium for political and social progress, against the likes of Lil’ Yachty, Lil’ Uzi Vert, 21 Savage and all of the new-wave, pseudo-thug mumble rappers who combine stereotypical trap beats with unintelligible lyrics (can you tell I’m biased). No, two significantly different theories of rap have emerged; but, while it is easy to distinguish between the sounds of each group while listening to music from the poster children from each faction, artists often fall in varying positions along the spectrum of style.
Big Sean falls into this category of the indistinguishable, mainly due to the artist’s tendency of constant reinvention and his inability to decide on a sound. Exploding onto the rap scene in 2007 after signing with Kanye West’s label, GOOD Music, Big Sean launched his first studio album in 2011, titled “Finally Famous.” This album, featuring middle school dance staples, “Dance (A$$)” and “My Last” ft. Chris Brown was met with incredible success, solidifying Big Sean’s career as a legitimate, self-sufficient musician. But, it seems that despite providing legitimacy and financial stability the whimsical style of “Finally Famous” has in many ways barred Big Sean from breaking into the elite tier of lyricists. Every album following Sean’s debut has been a step away from Sean’s original, iconic sound and toward critical acceptance as a lyricist, but Sean has yet to completely reinvent himself as an artist, producing Frankenstein albums with seven different sounds and features to match.
The Album/ How It Compares
Does Big Sean finally immortalize himself as a top five lyricist on “I Decided”? No. In fact, this album may be Sean’s most frustrating release to date. Continuing the trend of moving away from his 2011 sound, Sean displays creative and introspective lyrics at times, but the majority of these streaks of brilliance are drowned in mediocre, sellout club songs that greatly dilute the artist’s talent. What’s truly frustrating about the album is just how good Sean actually is on certain parts of it. No song embodies this more than “Voices In My Head/Stick To The Plan,” a song that delivers a wave of monotonous garbage for the first three minutes of the song, only to have Big Sean deliver a rapid fire outro describing the nuances of a pressure-induced existential crisis. It seems that the entire album mimics this model. Songs such as “intro,” “Sunday Morning Jetpack” and “Bigger Than Me” tell Sean’s story of growing up with family and gospel influence in the city of Detroit, while the rest of the album seems to exude an overproduced, downright fake aura of sellout club-rap. Simply put: When Big Sean is real and true to his roots, he is one of the most talented rappers in the music industry. This album isn’t that, but it’s a step in the right direction.
