“The past few years making this album have been a journey to say the least, but I’m just glad we finally here,” was how Big Sean announced his sixth album ‘Better Me Than You’ in July, back before the album leaked and he delayed its arrival by another three weeks. At last, though, that journey has come to an end.
The overarching idea here is that we can finally see exactly how transformative it’s been for the Detroit rapper to become a father and navigate the world as “a human in development”. But Big Sean has an unwanted rep for being corny, and it’s hard to shake.
There aren’t heaps of offending bars here (ignoring “so solid, to the point, that my homeboy is The Rock”) and yet his changed man persona can make your eyes roll so hard you’ll get dizzy, especially on skits like Focus and Clarity.
But when he just raps on Yes or Typecast, leaning hard into his typically crystalline enunciation, we see an artist that is capable of great things. On songs such as Iconic his flow-switches, storytelling, and vocabulary are a delight to be party to, making the front half of this record some of his best work to date.
Similarly, the features are largely well deployed. Gunna’s contribution to It Is What It Is makes for a vibey track that deserves playlisting, while appearances from Charlie Wilson, Ellie Goulding, Thundercat and The Alchemist hint at a willingness to push into different styles and territories.
And yet, there is so much bloat about ‘Better Me Than You’. A sagging run of seven tracks between Something and Boundaries makes the record’s 63-minute runtime feel like an unnecessary chore. It’s a blancmange of modern-hip-hop-by-numbers that does nothing memorable.
The end result is another tantalising glimpse at how good Big Sean could be if he had the ability to to focus all that talent into a tight collection of songs. The downfall of ‘Better Me Than You’ isn’t how mid it is, it’s how good it could be. Maybe one day we’ll get the back-to-front high quality album he’s clearly capable of.
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