Just yesterday, on September 4th, Big Sean finally published his huge, long awaited album, “Detroit 2”. This album is packed with many new singles with collaborations featuring multiple popular artists. The new LP is filled with a massive 21 new singles, with guest appearances from his girlfriend Jhené Aiko, as well as many artists like Erykah Badu, Travis Scott, and the legacy icon Stevie Wonder. This sounds like a very unique and interesting mix of collabs, especially with him working with Stevie Wonder in the song “Story”, the penultimate track in the LP.
Big Sean’s new album starts off with the solo single “Why Would I Stop”, without any guest appearances. The song is uplifting, confident, and individualistically minded in a positive way, with the lyrics talking about “doing you” and not stopping going after one’s own passions and being unapologetically themselves. The second track, also a solo work, conveys a similar message, with its grateful but slightly sarcastic title “Lucky Me”. Through this song, he gets vulnerable and personal about his past struggles that he had to fight against to get to the high standing and popularity in the music industry that he has now achieved. One of the major setbacks that he explicitly mentions is having been diagnosed with heart disease at the age of 19 and having to be in and out of the hospital receiving intensive treatment. At the same time, he also discusses in his lyrics some of the current eminent drawbacks of fame, such as comments and posts going viral quickly. With societal online trends like cancel culture being especially rampant and transformative at Big Sean’s level of worldwide recognition, this can affect him and his reputation very easily. This song and his next hit “Deep Reverence” with Nipsey Hussle, are some of the most memorable songs of the album because they both delve deeply into themes and events that are very personal, vulnerable, and close to his heart. Just like in “Lucky Me”, in “Deep Reverence” he similarly talks about the personal challenges he faced, such as overcoming grief and mental health struggles due to the clearly mentioned miscarriage with him and Jhené Aiko, through the line “I lost a baby”. However, there is so much more to this song that deserves much support for Big Sean as he expresses himself and gets very real with his fans through his substantial musical platform. Both of these songs establish one of the main recurring themes of the song, which is to open up to music listeners and to help them and inspire them through their major obstacles and low points in life and in effect support and comfort them. The album is catchy and fun in Big Sean’s usual rap style yet inspiring and motivating to listen to. It is available on YouTube, Spotify, and other digital download and streaming platforms, and is beyond worth a listen!
