Big Sean

Sean Michael Leonard Anderson, known professionally as Big Sean, is an American rapper. He met Kanye West as a teenager, and signed with his record label GOOD Music, an imprint of Def Jam Recordings in 2007.

Big Sean's ascent from Detroit teenager to GOOD Music cornerstone hinges on a chance encounter that became one of Kanye West's shrewdest signings—the kid freestyled outside a radio station and never left the label's orbit. His rapid-fire delivery became the blueprint for early-2010s rap, cutting through beats with surgical precision on *Finally Famous* and *Hall of Fame*, albums that proved Detroit could sustain more than one rap dynasty. Beyond his own catalog, Sean's gravitational pull extended through collabs with Jack Harlow and an endless rotation of features that cemented him as the connective tissue between Midwestern and Southern rap during hip-hop's streaming ascension. Though he rarely headlines the conversation about the era's most important voices, his fingerprints are everywhere in it.