Clinton Sparks Tells a Pretty Awesome Story About Hangin’ with Big Sean

From the day I met Sean, he had that insatiable drive to win, yet he was insanely humble. I didn't know Sean too well outside of his music before we met one night at a college show that he and Mike Posner had together, but I knew after a minute of talking that not only did I like him and think he was cool, but that he had something special.

After the show where we met, I had to DJ a party in Boston and invited him to roll with me. It was a typical party. Ciroc all around, and not just because I was giving out free shots. Some photographers, random people wanting to come in the booth, and rappers trying to kick it with Sean. He hung out in the booth with me and we rocked. Once the party was over, we left and hung out in my truck just kicking it about music and life. From this conversation, it was undeniable that he was not only patient with waiting for his time to shine (being signed to Good Music and not really having his music pushed), but that he was in fact going to win. He played me some of his music, and I played him some of mine. We were like two kids getting excited that we like the same things.

At this point, I played a record that Mike Posner and I had made recently, titled “Ambiguous”, and said it would be cool for Sean to be a part of this record too. He loved it and agreed to jump on it. If it wasn't for Sean, no one would have ever heard that record which has well over a million video views. To this day I get people quoting lines from it on my social media pages. 

So here's what happened:

Once we were done recording the track, we didn't really have any plans for it. At this point, Mike’s “Cooler than Me” was a Billboard smash so of course Sean and I wanted the world to hear the record, but due to Mikes label politics it wasn't looking likely to be able to come out legitimately. It looked like the record would never see the light of day. Additionally, I had rapped a line that I thought may be too raunchy to keep on it and planned on changing it if we ever, in fact, were able to do something with the song.

A while later, Sean hit me and asked if I minded if he put the song on his “Finally Famous” mixtape. Because I was self-conscious about that one line on the song, I just said, “Nah, let's not put it out.” Fast forward two months, and I get a Google alert that Ambiguous will be on Big Sean’s new mixtape dropping tomorrow. I'm just sitting there, like WTF!

I immediately hit Sean and Mike with a text along the lines of, “Yo, did either of you let this song get out or leak?” Mike hit me immediately saying, “Not me”. Then an hour later Sean hit me saying, “Yo, call me.” The gist of the story is that Sean thought it was cool to put “Ambiguous” on the mixtape and hadn’t realized he was going against my wishes. He probably just forgot and knew it was too dope to waste so he added it to his mixtape.

Needless to say, at this point with his tape dropping in like twelve hours we couldn't change it. The tape dropped and the song was received extremely well. We even shot a video and the line I was so concerned about was probably the most quoted line in the song. If you don't know the line I'm talking about then you should go listen to the song.

Moral of the story is that I owe a huge THANK YOU to Sean for ignoring my request. Ha. Look for Sean’s new album coming soon and for him to be a part of my forthcoming album “Disco Ball and Chain” on Photo Finish/ Island Def Jam.

 

For more on Clinton Sparks, check out his Tumblr, or throw him a follow on twitter!