Tension was pretty thick for Big Sean and Kendrick Lamar after they released “Control” in 2013, where K-Dot took a jab or two at the Detroit rapper. Years later, in 2016, Sean released “No More Interviews,” which had a few subliminals aimed at Kendrick. Fast forward to 2020, Big Sean has opened up about the rumored beef, saying that he wishes he would have spoken up at the time.
During a recent interview with Joe Budden for his “Pull Up” YouTube series, Sean said he wasn’t taking shots at Kendrick. He said, “So then I remember going online and seeing, ‘Oh, is he talking about Kendrick?’ ‘Cause I was talking about people who rap fast. I wasn’t beefing with nobody. I was literally addressin’ a whole f**kin’–I’m just rapping, ni**a. It wasn’t like a specific person or else I would’ve said his name.”
Sean continued, “So I see and I’m like, ‘That’s some bullshit.’ So I didn’t give no energy to it. Time goes on, and then Kendrick, he dropped a freestyle [‘The Heart Part 4’] and I don’t know what he said that made people like, ‘Oh, it’s about Sean.’ So I hear the sh*t, I’m like, ‘What part they talkin’ ’bout?’”
The Detroit rapper said he reached out to TDE CEO Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith to see if Kendrick was, in fact, dissing him on the record. “I immediately hit up Top ’cause I got a relationship with Top,” he explained. “And they like, ‘No, it ain’t about you at all. That was just addressing to everyone. That was just to whoever. But don’t listen to the Internet, they just gonna throw 200 on it.’ “I’m like, ‘Alright, fo sho.’ Imagine I have that conversation, I’m like, ‘Alright, I ain’t even gotta reach out to Kendrick.’”
Sean said things between him and Kendrick became awkward, despite there being no real beef. He went on to say, “It got to a point where somehow, it was just a weird tension between me and him even though it was already said it was no beef because people made it that way.”
The rapper says he felt he should have spoken up about the situation, adding, “Fast forward, I let the sh*t go. He let the sh*t go. He never talked about it. I never talked about it and I shoulda said something. I shoulda just came out and been like, ‘Nah, that ain’t it.’”