What Big Sean Really Did With The Money For His College Tuition
Big Sean is one of the most prolific (and under-appreciated, we might add!) rappers of this generation. While Drake and Kanye West constantly pervade the mainstream (ironically the two have back-to-back features on Big Sean's "Dark Sky Paradise" record), Big Sean is like a groundhog — emerging from hibernation only when it's his time to shine. And now, a decade removed from his smash hit debut "Finally Famous," it's safe to say that Big Sean has left an indelible mark on hip-hop history.
Arriving on the scene with bangers like "100 Keys" and "High," Big Sean quickly established himself as a top player in the hip-hop game. Think about it, whose first record seriously has features from Chris Brown, John Legend, Wiz Khalifa, and Rick Ross?! And you can't possibly discuss hip-hop from the early to mid-2010s without throwing Big Sean's name into the mix.
Beyond such, Big Sean has proven himself to be an incredible mind outside of music. Did you know that he graduated high school with a 3.7 GPA? (Okay, maybe you did.) But the rapper, who was once poised for higher education success, quickly traded in the textbooks for rhyme schemes and hip-hop. In fact, Big Sean was set to attend Michigan State University, but he ultimately blew his college savings out before the fame. So what did Big Sean do with his college savings? Read on to find out.
Big Sean used his college savings to jumpstart his career
It's a really risky move to spend your college tuition money on things that aren't your college tuition, but that wasn't stopping Big Sean from his path to success. In a 2015 interview with "The Breakfast Club" (via Music Times), the rapper revealed that his late grandmother (who was actually "one of the first female black captains in WWII"!) had saved up quite a decent amount for her grandson's college endeavors, but he opted to use it all on studio time.
"When I graduated high school, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to get to this music. I wanted to be a rapper," Big Sean prefaced. "I was on my way to Michigan State, but I just didn't go because I had just rapped for [Kanye West], and the deal was supposed to be in the works. But it took a couple years," he continued.
"My grandma had saved up her whole life for college money, tuition, and I'm blowing it on studio sessions. It was something that was frustrating," he went on to reveal. Elsewhere in the interview, Big Sean noted that during that time period, he was "staying in the same crib I grew up in, obviously, at my mom's house, in the same room I grew up in," on top of getting "frustrated when all of your homies calling you from college like, 'Yeah man, I just hit this, and I just did this.'"
Big Sean is still grateful to his grandmother
Despite using his grandmother's money saved for studio time (instead of ostensibly college), Big Sean was still ultimately grateful for her contributions to his career and the world. In the song "One Man Can Change the World," the rapper pays homage to his late grandmother, whom he held dearly. "On the second verse I talk about my grandma ... [aside from serving in WWII] she was one of the first female cops in the D," Big Sean revealed to "The Breakfast Club" (via Music Times). "She was a counselor, a teacher, and the best grandma. She used to cook homemade meals every day after school, had our special birthday cakes," he further added.
The rapper noted that "she was like 94 years old" when he "was just finishing the album around Christmas, and I was going to go play it for her, but she passed Dec. 20." He also mentioned that, despite her untimely death, he "still felt her consciousness there — it was weird. I still felt like she heard it and was there with us." He later "kinda felt like 'man, she was 94, in pain and in a wheelchair,'" but "was happy for her that she was somewhere in heaven."
He concluded with a poignant reflection: "She's seen Hitler and she's seen Obama in the same lifetime. That's like OG right there. If one person showed me that you could change the world, it was her."