Big Sean’s last solo album was his second-consecutive chart-topper. I Decided achieved platinum status, and was named among Ambrosia For Heads’ “Best Albums Of 2017.” The veteran Detroit, Michigan lyricist continued a journey in making personal, cohesive albums that addressed a life in the spotlight.

Approaching his upcoming Don Life, Big Sean intends to balance that personality, with the mixtape-era bravado that made him a dominant voice throughout the last decade. Heads get their first taste of that work with “Overtime,” produced by longtime collaborators Hit-Boy and KeY Wane, as well as TheTuckerBrothers.

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“I [have] just been returning to my roots, bro,” Sean recently told Zane Lowe. “I’ve just been getting back to having fun with it. At one point, I felt like it might have started to become like a burden, or like work, but now it’s just fun. So this is just me having fun bro, expressing myself. It was a time well spent.”

That attitude comes across in the music. “The universe been throwing me all the signs except stop it / Ni**as been plotting on me, but here’s the plot twist / I can’t throw fits no more unless it’s profits / Lord, why you keep boxing me in, ’cause I’m God’s gift? / I might set my mic back up in the closet, though / Just to give myself that same feeling from ’04 / When my hunger was more, advice to you and yours / They say it’s over for you, that’s when you go overboard, okay? / Sh*t, I didn’t take a break, my ni**a, I broke / Broke my heart, broke my soul, don’t cry for me though,” he says, also alluding to recent admissions of depression. “If you don’t break nothing down then it’s no room to grow / One mental block leads to another, sh*t, it’s dominoes / Mixtape Sean, but I’m in album-mode.”

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Although he shows his wounds, Sean-Don can still puff up his chest. He claims that he and his “No Favors” collaborator Eminem “knocked down doors” for the city “that was locked twice.” He also takes a swipe at high-profile exes. “I got Don Life on my pendant, I’m conditioned to do the distance / And I just set up the pensions, family set like my intentions / Been balancing trying to keep my company with the girls who wanna keep me company / You know the ones who claim they over me, but would much rather be under me / Is confident and been through too much just to be done with me / And you know that shit gets stressful right? / Sh*t taxing, the same thing that got Wesley Snipes.” A proven master at wordplay, Sean is back in his bag.

However, this MC’s eye is on his future, not his past. “If you ain’t on my frequency, you out of tune and not tuned in / To break the unbreakable, escape the un-escapable / ‘Til you push your f*cking limits, you don’t even know what’s capable / F*ck that sh*t that you believe in, I believe in me / Talkin’ on they phones and PC like they off that PCP / B*tch, I spit that Eazy-E, face to face, Smack DVD / I don’t got no time for hanging out and all that E-T-C / Just cut the check, C-T-C, God-body my physique / I can look inside your eyes and know exactly what you mean / F*ck you mean? Energy the first language that I speak / No facade, I belong in the Palace of Versailles with a queen by my side / In this hot girl summer, I’m just trying to find a wife.”

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As an artist who has sometimes drifted from his peer class of Drake, J. Cole, and Kendrick Lamar (among others), Big Sean is poppin’ off to remind all that he’s revisiting that spirit from the meteoric rise.