Big Sean: "4 My People"

Kanye’s G.O.O.D. Music is a strange vanity imprint, perhaps highlighting as a case-in-point the artistic disparities between West and his big brother, Big’s brother, Jay-Z. For a few years there, Jay-Z’s Roc-a-fella Records kept alive the idea of hard-knock East coast emceeing as a commercial viability, and even though shit has since fizzled and Hova’s fallen out with the old crew, for a minute there they were definitive. For his part, Yeezy’s got a lot of talent on G.O.O.D. Music, but only first signee John Legend has found any significant success. After that it’s a string of releases either disappointing (Kid Cudi), slept-on (Consequence) or never-arrived (Bentley Fonzworth). One gets the idea Kanye’s too busy “trying to do him” lol to really foster much of a posse.

Big Sean’s got no such problem: “4 My People” is a friends-jam so huge-hearted and convivial his posse feels, like, universal. One feels a champagne flute foisted into one’s hand from the first group-hug hook. Sean’s one of the hottest signings to G.O.O.D. Music—his impending full-length, whenever it releases, comes cosigned by Q-Tip and Pharrell in addition to West—and his love for Kanye is palpable on mixtapes. On “4 My People,” though, recorded for XXL’s Freshmen 10 mixtape, he’s not hanging onto Ye’s success but burning the beat solo like a fat one on a summer afternoon: at his goddamn leisure. The beat’s barely worth mentioning but Sean’s easy flow is something revelatory, emceeing from an intellectual standpoint somewhere as culturally on-point as Charles Hamilton but way less self-conscious, and as direct and radio-ready as Drake but way less douchey. The hook—all half-sung hang-out and everyone-together-now grinning—is the real star here, and as listeners we welcome its return a few times, followed by a graceful bow-out. Coupled with the emcee’s considerable hype and intermittently great mixtape work, this no-fuss banger feels like proof of something big. The last time I heard confidence sound so casual might’ve been, well, Roc-a-fella.

Download the XXL 10 Freshman for ’10 (sic) mixtape here.