There’s an old saying that goes, “There’s nothing new under the sun.” Meaning there’s nearly nothing on Earth that hasn’t been tried already. The same goes for hip-hop. In the genre’s 51 years of existence, thousands (maybe millions) of rappers come along with different rap styles, unique voice inflections and non-typical lyrical pacing. This makes it difficult for anyone to come along with a fresh angle. Throughout the years, rappers have been getting called out for biting other rappers’ styles. It’s a claim that has existed since the genre’s inception.
Recently, Big Sean was chastised by fans who heard his new song” Yes,” and accused him of stealing Baby Keem’s flow. On the track, which is featured on the Detroit rapper’s upcoming album, Better Me Than You, Sean somewhat mimics a style similar to Keem’s delivery—possibly heard on Keem and Kendrick Lamar’s “Family Ties.”
“We really live in a world where baby keem has 40 year old sons,” the viral tweet claims.
“Yall not lying, that new Big Sean track 100% Baby Keem style, flow chorus beat everything,” one person surmised on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Other rap fans were not so convinced.
“Big Sean didn’t steal Baby Keem flow,” another X user opined. “He has older songs with that same voice and style.. yall just too young or lack the musical knowledge.”
Sean himself even appeared to address the issue on X, typing “Must not be familiar wit my game.”
So it doesn’t appear that Sean bit Keem’s or any rapper’s flow. He’s using a version of his own flow and approaching it with a fresh angle. As the X user said, it can be argued Keem was influenced in some way by Sean’s flow.
There have been other moments in hip-hop history where the accusations of style-biting have been more noteworthy. Desiigner‘s 2018 song “Panda” turned the Brooklyn, N.Y. rapper into a hitmaker, but the success was not without backlash. Desiigner was railed for being a Future clone. Accusations that were difficult for the rapper to shake throughout his career.
Early on in Drake’s career, he was accused of swiping Big Sean’s flow. Sean even addressed the talk in an interview in 2011.
“Drake is my homie,” Sean said. “He gave me a lot of credit, because I came up with rhyme scheme a lot of people thought that he came up with. I called it ‘Supa Dupa Flow,’ but he kind of made it more popular on the song ‘Forever.'”
Do rappers ever really bite a flow? There has been blatant swagger jacking on songs throughout the years, so the answer is yes. Yet running to accuse an artist shouldn’t always be the case without knowing that artist’s history first. Whether old or new, a rapper usually approaches rapping from their own perspective. As times change, they look around themselves and within for inspiration. Whether it’s the past or present, a change in flow can even come from that rapper’s own past work rather than from stealing another artist’s flow.
While rap has grown and elevated over the years, many artists will still sound similar to the next at least once in their career since the art form takes inspiration from itself. Fifty-one years isn’t very long when looking at the bigger picture of hip-hop.
The advent of the internet also turned hip-hop into a global phenomenon. Many rappers sound less like the region where they’re from and more like the rappers they grew up emulating. Therefore, there’s a generation of rappers that sound like an amalgam of Young Thug, Chief Keef and Future, making it at times difficult to tell the difference.
Sometimes, a borrowed flow isn’t done out of malice or laziness, and can be a rapper’s attempt at trying something new. That doesn’t stop fans from calling them out, fair or foul.