Big Sean Suggests He’s Not Interested in ‘Mount Rushmore’ Rapper Conversation: ‘My Purpose Is to Inspire’
In a new cover feature for XXL Magazine, Big Sean suggested that he’s not interested in conversations about “the Mount Rushmore of rap” so long as he inspires anyone who listens to his music.
“For me in hip-hop, when it comes to those conversations about Mount Rushmore and all these things… I got a lot of people who do fuck with me, and I got a lot of people don’t fuck with me,” he shared around the 5:15 point of the interview, seen below. “I can honestly say, though, the life that I’ve lived and the impact that I made, even like recently when I’m looking back on all that Drake footage that’s been dropping… I see all the impact. Even with Travis, Days Before Rodeo, ‘Don’t Play,’ I was already doing it for a long time then.”
He said that he feels “blessed” to have had a career in the music industry for as long as he has, but he doesn’t want to sit back and look at what his impact has been. “I can’t even pay attention to where my status is to people,” he continued. “It’s too much for me to concentrate on. It’s too stressful. Too gut-punching sometimes, because I have put a lot into it. … When you on your path, you just got to stay on your path.”
The 36-year-old rapper, who just dropped his introspective new album Better Me Than You, said he’s grown accustomed to receiving just as much love as he does hate.
“You just got to stay on your course, because when you get thrown off that’s when it gets real bad,” he said. “I feel like I really got a purpose, or else I wouldn’t be able to do it. If you ask me what my purpose is, it’s to inspire anyway I can. I don’t know if my purpose is to be the best rapper ever… I feel like I have one of the craziest stories in hip-hop when it comes to, like, the fairy tale story of meeting one of your idols. Rapping for him, working to get a record deal and then having to build an organic fan base from there, and just go through all these ups and downs.”
Sean recently sat down for an interview with Jordan Rose for Complex, during which he spoke about how becoming a father influenced the record.
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“There isn’t a course to fatherhood that’s like, ‘Oh, you got it,'” he shared. “It’s like an ongoing learning process. Fatherhood has been the best experience and the newest experience that I’ve ever gone through. It’s just a completely different thing. It’s not like writing a book or making an album or whatever you would think it is. It’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
