After a lyric in Big Sean’s recent On the Radar freestyle was perceived as a diss against West, more than a dozen songs from his upcoming album surfaced online without authorization
Tensions have been running high in hip-hop over the last few months since Kendrick Lamar unofficially declared 2024 the Year of the Hater. This hunger for confrontation has spilled over the edge so much that rappers are now finding themselves at odds not with another rapper but with that artist’s fanbase. Big Sean is the latest musician to get caught in a battle of pettiness and disrespect, with his opponent being Kanye West‘s fanbase — a member of which allegedly leaked the Detroit rapper’s upcoming album.
During his recent freestyle on On the Radar, Big Sean rapped: “I got better things to do than find someone to beef with.” Some listeners interpreted the line as a shot at Lamar, who has been sparring with Drake (and winning) since March. Media personality DJ Hed dismissed these rumors, stating on X (formerly Twitter) that he spoke with Big Sean and was told: “It was not for Dot. Bar was directed at a different Gemini.” This is where West’s fanbase came in.
Fourteen songs from what is supposedly Big Sean’s next album appeared online in the hours after the exchange via a popular website for music leaks. “Since he wanna disrespect Ye so much, here’s the album,” the user bigseandon811 wrote while posting the files in question. “Fuck him and his whole team.” The user went on to claim that West himself instructed him to share the unauthorized copy of the album.
Some of the music that surfaced was incomplete, with open spaces for verses to be dropped in later. It also featured what sounds like guest appearances from Nas, Charlie Wilson, and Brent Faiyaz.
In recent years, we’ve seen artists scrap projects altogether following leaks of this magnitude. But rather than starting over from scratch, Big Sean is trying his best to get ahead of the leaker. “I’m a just start droppin this new music before they leak it all,” the rapper wrote on Instagram while teasing an upcoming collaboration with The Alchemist.
Apart from “Precision,” the one-off single Big Sean shared earlier this year, the rapper hasn’t released music as a lead artist in two years. In 2022, he shared the deluxe edition of his fifth studio album, Detroit 2, the standard edition of which arrived in 2020. In 2021, the Detroit musician existed West’s label G.O.O.D. Music after 14 years. That same year, West appeared on Drink Champs and declared: “The worst thing I’ve ever done is sign Big Sean.”
