Big Sean is praising his peers from the iconic "blog era."
During the latest episode of NPR's Tiny Desk series, the Detroit rapper kicked off his performance by giving flowers to the blog era, which produced an entire generation of rappers, including Drake, Nicki Minaj, J. Cole, Kendrick Lamar, Big Sean, and more. Before streaming, blogs, forums, and mixtape sites produced an influential class of rappers.
"For some of y'all who don't know, I am a blog-era mixtape rapper, you know what I'm saying?" Sean shared. "I'm somebody who came up in that blog era and got blessed with the cosign [from] Ye, and then [I] had to really build my fanbase organically. It wasn't no playlist and it wasn't no streaming like that. It was a tough time."
Big Sean continued, "I wanna shout out all my peers, all my people who [were] in the blog era, [and the] rappers [who are] still doing their thing because to make it out of there, it wasn't easy. You have to take them on that journey with you."
The Dark Sky Paradise rapper's comments caught the eye of ItsTheReal, host of the award-winning Blog Era Podcast, who hopped on Twitter to thank the notable figures from that period for helping his show win an Ambie Award.
"It was indeed an honor for @theblogera to be nominated for an Ambie last night," ItsTheReal wrote. "The three years, 150 interviewees and over 500 hours of original recordings stand up as significant and long-lasting, no matter the hardware. But next year, we’re bringing home three for the family!"
Across 25 minutes of his Tiny Desk performance, Sean touched on 14 songs from his catalog, starting with "Memories" from 2010. This led into "Nothing Is Stopping You," the intro track off 2013's Hall of Fame, as well as “Blessings,” “All Me,” “Bounce Back,” and much more.
Sean was backed by band comprised of the following musicians: Thaddeus Dixon, Amaire Johnson, Henry McDaniel, DJ Mo Beatz, Samoht, Ashly Williams, Eryn Allen, Kane, George Lovett, Lady Jess, Ariel Byrd, Jerome Gordon, and Johnny Walker, Jr.
