The singer opens up about burnout, acting and finding her voice, while director Sue Kim reveals how unprecedented access captured a year of growth for her intimate new documentary, Always Lalisa.

Lisa in Always Lisa

There is a moment in Always Lalisa when the scale surrounding Lisa seems almost beside the point. The stadiums, cameras, choreography and machinery of global pop are still there, but director Sue Kim’s documentary is most interested in what happens when one of the most recognisable performers in the world is given something she has rarely had since she was a teenager: room to figure herself out.

“It's almost like a delayed coming of age,” Kim tells Rolling Stone Canada ahead of the documentary's premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. She had sensed that possibility almost immediately after Sony Music Vision approached her about following Lisa through the year she was establishing her solo career and recording Alter Ego. Kim knew BLACKPINK and appreciated K-pop, but it wasn't the prospect of documenting a famous person that interested her. “I saw this year as an opportunity for someone to expand who they are to maybe live outside of their comfort zone, like Lisa was doing,” she says. “She was trying to do something she's never done before. There's no real template for that as well.” Whatever happened, Kim thought, there would inevitably be some combination of “growth and maybe hardship, but also expansion.”

Sitting down with Lisa, that idea of a belated coming of age becomes more interesting because she doesn't particularly mourn the adolescence she gave up. She was 13 when, as Always Lalisa recounts, a fortune teller suggested changing her name. “I wanted to be a singer, you know, like I want to be an artist,” she remembers. A year later, she left Thailand for South Korea. “I had to drop out of my school, fly to Korea, age of 14,” she recalls. “I trained for five years, so I would never have experienced high school stuff or a prom.” She laughs about the prom fantasy now, the dresses and crowns she has seen in films and games, although she is quick to point out that the ritual was never exactly part of the Thai adolescence she left behind. More importantly, she resists the idea that ambition simply robbed her of something. “I don't feel like I miss something, you know, because I go to Korea and I wanted to be there. I wanted to train there.”

Something is striking about knowing what you want that young and actually getting it. Lisa spent the years when most people are still experimenting with possible versions of themselves pursuing one with extraordinary precision, eventually becoming one fourth of BLACKPINK and one of the most recognisable pop stars of her generation. Always Lalisa begins at the other end of that certainty. What happens when you have already become the person you decided to be at 13 and discover that you might want to become other things too? Kim watched that question play out not as a clean reinvention but in flashes. “I think she got a lot closer to who she wants to be creatively as an artist, who she wants to be as a young woman, what she wants her life to look like,” she says. “She grew so much.”

Some of that growth came from choosing to be inexperienced again. Lisa had spent most of her life singing and dancing by the time The White Lotus offered her the chance to act, and familiarity had begun carrying its own fatigue. “I've been singing and dancing since I was young till now, and you know, sometimes you just get burned out,” she says. Acting appealed because she couldn't rely on years of muscle memory. “I feel like this would be the opportunity for me to try new things to challenge myself, new stuff that I'm not comfortable with, and I've never done it before.” Playing Mook in season three of The White Lotus – who speaks both Thai and English – gave her a way into that discomfort without making everything unfamiliar at once. “It's a good role for me to start something like acting,” Lisa says. “I'm just so lucky that I got to play Mook.”

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Kim was watching for precisely those moments, though she insists she didn't know what story they would eventually become. Her filmmaking leans heavily on observation, and she resisted arriving with a ready-made narrative about a K-pop star breaking free. “Whenever I think I know what the story will be, the actual footage, the actual events of this person's life always end up showing me something deeper and something more interesting,” she says. With Lisa, Kim tried instead to notice what kept “bubbling to the surface”: when she was struggling, when she was changing, when something that looked like another career milestone from the outside felt considerably more complicated from within. “I was very focused on not trying to determine what her story was and to try to listen to what she was telling me just in her daily life.”

Listening required keeping up with her first. Kim and her crew embedded themselves with Lisa and her team, and she laughs now about discovering that the most difficult production problem was simply Lisa's schedule. Film crews have mandated breaks and Lisa's life did not seem to. “It was so hard to maintain a film crew and a film production on her schedule because she gets no breaks,” Kim says. People occasionally had to be rotated out just to physically recover. “I've never seen anyone work this hard, and that's part of who she is.” It became another piece of information about Lisa that Kim could not have understood from a performance or music video. The relentlessness wasn't happening for the camera; the camera was struggling to keep pace with it.

But Always Lalisa needed the moments when that competence slipped, too. Kim entered the project wondering how much vulnerability LISA would actually permit once the cameras were there. One of the documentary’s rawer scenes was filmed on the day LISA learned about the so-called “YG Leaker” scandal, a 2025 data breach that saw a large cache of purportedly internal K-pop material released online, including pre-debut footage of BLACKPINK that quickly began circulating across social media. There was no planned interview or carefully composed response, Kim says, just LISA on a couch, a sweater pulled over her head, processing what she was feeling in real time. “There was no premeditation; it was just her truly speaking her thoughts and emotions and, like, sadness and regret about the situation,” Kim recalls. “It was really stream of consciousness.” “That's what made that scene so affecting. It was so emotional and vulnerable.” Kim knew the stakes of leaving it in. “She knows that there could be a lot of pushback from the fans or from the public about what she was revealing,” she says.

Lisa in Always LisaCourtesy Photo

The greater test came later, when Lisa actually had to watch herself being that exposed. Kim remembers sitting down for the first screening with some apprehension. “I was like, is she going to regret having been this vulnerable with this?” she says. Lisa watched, laughed, cried and ultimately told Kim she loved it. According to the director, she never asked for a vulnerable moment to be removed because she was worried about how it made her look. “There were a couple things that she asked to be removed, and they were all things that she was worried [would] hurt or, like, you know, a friend of hers in the film might be uncomfortable with,” Kim says. “But when it came to herself, she was willing to be so seen.”

Being seen is a curious proposition for Lisa, who has spent years being almost unimaginably visible. Always Lalisa repeatedly returns to the distance between those things, finding intimacy not through some enormous revelation but in the details that survive underneath the spectacle. Before going onstage, for instance, she still thinks about Teacher Nok, her childhood dance instructor, and her grandfather. “I feel like he's my guardian angel, and also my grandpa,” she says of Nok. “If I think of them before I go on stage, [it] just brings confidence,” she explains, believing that they will make sure everything goes well. “And it always works.”

Even at Coachella, where the scale becomes difficult to ignore, Kim found herself searching for what was happening outside the official frame. Lisa’s April 2025 appearance marked her first time performing at the festival as a solo artist, two years after BLACKPINK became the first Asian act to headline Coachella, and Kim wanted to capture the stakes of that transition as much as the spectacle itself. Goldenvoice’s cameras covered the singer’s performance at the Sahara stage, while Kim directed an additional crew towards the moments a festival livestream would never necessarily prioritise, including Rosé dancing with Lisa’s mother as they watched her perform. “That's not gonna be covered by the Coachella camera,” Kim says of those peripheral moments. “So I had a crew that I was able to direct, like, that's what we need to get.” But underneath the stage, in the minutes before she walked out for one of the biggest solo performances of her career, Kim couldn’t bring her camera crew with her. She filmed on iPhones instead. “That's where the nerves are happening, that's where you feel the stakes,” she says. “So we needed to be filming.”The professionally captured version of Lisa, commanding a festival stage on her own, was already being broadcast around the world. Kim was interested in the few minutes before she had to become that person.

Perhaps the clearest evidence of what changed during the year, though, comes after Lisa returned to BLACKPINK. Asked what she discovered during the members’ time pursuing their own work, she doesn't describe some dramatic revelation about Rosé, Jennie or Jisoo. Instead, their solo projects felt almost uncannily familiar. “When I listened to their album and stuff, and I'm like, wow, that's so Rosé, that's so Jennie, that's so Jisoo,” she says. “It just, like, it makes so much sense.” What she saw was each member becoming more distinctly herself. “I'm just so proud of them, and I'm proud of myself too,” Lisa tells Rolling Stone Canada. “We're doing the same thing, but we're trying to find our own selves.”

That individual confidence changed what they brought back to BLACKPINK. “I think we all, like, found ourselves more and more during that break time,” Lisa says. “And that's why when we're back together, we're just, you know, we just got a lot of energy, and we just bring good energy to the team.” “We know each other so, so well, and we always support each other no matter what,” she says. “But I feel like we all gained a lot of confidence through that one year.” For her personally, the change is surprisingly practical. “It's just more like now I love to speak my opinion more and more,” she says. When decisions come up about styling or the group's creative work, she is more willing to voice what she thinks rather than “just say okay with everything.” “I'm more confident to, like, say it out loud,” she says. “And I think everybody's like that. I respect that, and I think everybody respects me the same way as well.”

LISA doesn't describe this as wresting creative control from anybody. If anything, she is careful to make the opposite point. BLACKPINK's conversations are conversations: the members listen, nobody judges, and they work towards a “middle ground” everyone can live with. “We're more like, let's have a conversation,” she says. “We know each other so well, so we would never judge each other. We're just more like, listen, okay, so try to find the middle ground and then just make sure that everybody's happy with that.” She says YG [Entertainment] is similarly open to hearing what the group wants. “I feel like BLACKPINK, we're like one,” she says. “YG also [is] really open to whatever we wanted to do because they respect us and we both respect each other.” But that doesn't diminish what has shifted. The significant part isn't that Lisa suddenly gets her way; it's that she has become more comfortable saying what her way might be.

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That is where Kim's description of a delayed coming of age begins to feel less like a filmmaker's framing and more like something Lisa is describing herself. The year didn't dismantle the identity she had spent more than a decade building. It expanded what she thought could fit alongside it: acting, solo music, different creative instincts, opinions voiced more confidently, and ultimately a return to BLACKPINK that didn't require shrinking those discoveries back down. “I really got to see a young woman come into her own, kind of find her selfhood,” Kim says, adding, “And that was so emotionally complicated, but really gratifying in the end.”

Lisa is more understated about what she hopes all of this reveals. Asked what she ultimately wants to leave people with, she initially says she has never really thought about legacy. Her answer instead returns to the film directly. “I just want people to understand me a little bit more of who I am because they just know me as Lisa, a BLACKPINK performer,” she tells us. “They don't really know my background, where I'm from, like how I am with friends.” For all the access the documentary gives, she is careful about what she believes that access is for. There are comments about her and her work that aren't true, she says, but she stops short of treating Always Lalisa as an opportunity to set the record straight. “There's a lot of, like, comment about my work or some things that it's not true,” she says. “I just want to not clarify myself,” she says, “but I just want them to just understand me a little bit more.”

For someone who has spent years becoming increasingly visible, “a little bit more” feels like a revealingly modest ambition. Always Lalisa doesn't offer a hidden, supposedly authentic Lisa to replace the one millions of people already know, nor does her year outside BLACKPINK emerge as a rejection of the life she chose at 13. Kim's “delayed coming of age” is subtler than that. The girl who knew exactly what she wanted grew up, got it, and discovered that becoming yourself doesn't necessarily end there. Now, Lisa seems increasingly comfortable with the possibility that she can keep deciding what comes next.

Cameron Whitcomb

Cameron Whitcomb is at home on Vancouver Island when he picks up the phone. Between tours, the Canadian singer-songwriter has been spending some time at home, where he's currently trying to sort out his yard. There is something instantly funny and oddly perfect about that image. One of Canada’s most exciting breakout artists, a singer-songwriter whose voice has travelled from Reddit covers and American Idol to Juno wins, international tours and the Billboard charts, is standing around his yard trying to decide where the rock beds should go. His brothers are doing most of the work. "I'm trying to get my yard looking half decent right now," he says. "Actually, my brothers are trying. I hired my brothers to landscape and so sometimes I'll go out there and point at stuff or pretend I'm helping, but I don't really help."

It's an unexpectedly ordinary image for one of Canada's fastest-rising artists. But the yard, like much of his life lately, represents something he's spent years chasing: stability. "I'm trying to make this yard as simple and easy as possible," he tells Rolling Stone Canada. "Lots of little rock beds, maybe a couple statues, stuff they don't really have to deal with because I'm on tour so much and I can't really maintain it."

It is not the kind of opening scene that gets written into most modern breakout-artist mythologies, but then Whitcomb has never sounded like someone who was carefully designing one. He speaks with the plainness of someone who has lived several lives before 23 and has not yet learned, or maybe has no interest in learning, how to sand those lives down into industry-friendly neatness. In conversation, he is blunt, funny, restless and almost allergic to romanticising himself. He can talk about addiction without turning it into performance, about success without making it sound preordained, and about music as if he still finds it slightly absurd that this is now the thing paying his bills. “I never thought it could be a career by any means,” he says, looking back on the years before it became one.

Cameron WhitcombPhotography by James Baker for Rolling Stone Canada

The numbers now tell a very different story. Whitcomb’s 2025 debut album, The Hard Way, pushed him from rising Canadian name to one of the country’s clearest new voices, leading to five JUNO nominations in 2026 and wins for Country Album of the Year and Breakthrough Artist or Group of the Year. His Deep Water EP arrived this spring, with “Kingdom of Fear” quickly becoming one of his biggest songs yet. The track landed on Spotify’s 2026 Songs of Summer predictions, climbed the Billboard Canadian Hot 100 and gave Whitcomb his first entry on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. His official site now lists Deep Water, The Hard Way and The Hard Way (Deluxe) alongside a run of tour dates that stretch across festivals and headline rooms, while his Kingdom of Fear Tour is set to take him through some of the biggest U.S. shows of his career so far this fall.

Still, Whitcomb’s story does not begin with music industry ambition. It begins with work. “I've always had a job since I was probably like, you know, well over 13,” he says. He helped his father when he was younger, then worked at McDonald’s at 14 and in retail at the mall around 15. At 16, he got his motorcycle license, which meant he could get himself to construction jobs around Vancouver Island. “I used to take the little motorcycle that I'd saved up for working those previous jobs and I used to take that motorcycle and ride all over Vancouver Island, you know, to get to like the work site,” he says. By 17, he was in what he calls his “little shitty car,” driving out to Kamloops to work at a Harley-Davidson dealership. At 18, he started working on the pipeline. Around that time, American Idol happened.

Cameron WhitcombPhotography by James Baker for Rolling Stone Canada

Before that, music had always existed in his life, but more as instinct than plan. Whitcomb played drums as a kid and grew up around a family that listened to music, even if they were not necessarily all musicians themselves. His mother listened to a lot of music, his grandfather and brother played, and he remembers always being a fan first. “I've always been a huge music fan,” he says. “Like playing drums and whatever but never really did the singing thing.” The singing, in a public sense, came through the internet. He had posted online, including on Reddit, where a casting agent eventually came across him.“I probably didn't make too many posts on Reddit, but that's definitely what caught a casting agent for American Idol’s attention,” he says.

American Idol gave him a beginning, but not an identity. When Whitcomb returned to the show recently for the finale, the experience carried a different meaning because he was no longer only the young contestant people remembered from Season 20. "It was really good because they'd seen one version of me, and now it's like I have my own thing, right?" he says. "I'm not just a contestant anymore. Now there's an actual artist they had on." That distinction matters because so much of Whitcomb’s career since then has been about becoming something more durable than a discovery story. American Idol gave him exposure, but the music that followed gave him ownership.

The Hard Way, for instance, true to its title, was rooted in the kind of material Whitcomb could only have written after living through it. He has been open about addiction in his songs and in interviews, but in conversation, he does not frame sobriety as a tidy inspirational pivot. He says he started drinking and using drugs when he was “like 11, 12 years old" and that it remained part of his life until he got sober three years ago, at 20. "It was either do music for a living or continue getting loaded," he says. A close friend getting clean gave him the push he needed, though it took a few tries before it stuck. "May 27, 2023. As soon as I got clean, that's kind of when everything started to take off and do a lot better for me."

Cameron WhitcombPhotography by James Baker for Rolling Stone Canada

That directness is also how he talks about songwriting. Whitcomb is not interested in pretending he can write from places that do not matter to him. "The whole thing is just trying to tell the truth and be honest with what I'm saying and what I'm doing," he says. "I haven't had any luck writing about stuff that doesn't mean anything to me." All of his own music, he says, comes from his truth, though writing for other people has taught him the value of hearing how someone else sees the world. "It's nice hearing their stories and how they perceive things and how they leave the world and you know how they react to certain things," he says. In his own catalogue, that truth has often meant writing through addiction, mental health, relationships and the consequences of choices made young. It is confessional without trying to sound precious about confession.

What makes Whitcomb interesting right now, though, is not only that he survived enough to write The Hard Way. It is that success itself nearly pushed him out of music. After his career began to pick up, he says the people around him at the time could only take him so far before things began to fall apart. He describes bad logistics, financial stress and the feeling that the day-to-day machinery of his career was keeping him from actually being an artist. "I was losing lots of money," he says. "My flights were on the wrong dates, and it was really hard for me to just be an artist. I kind of lost touch with the artistry and was worried about my day-to-day life. I was depressed and honestly just felt like this music thing wasn't for me anymore." Eventually, he parted ways with that management and found a new team, which he credits with changing his life. "My whole life is organized," he says. "They really take care of me and they really care about my mental health."

For an artist whose music often deals in turbulence, Whitcomb talks about structure with visible relief. He says he feels safer in his career now. He mentions Warner Music Canada, Atlantic Records, his lawyer, business management and the wider group of people around him with real gratitude, not as a list of machinery but as a support system. "The people you keep around you are a representation of who you are," he says. "Now I've been very fortunate at this point in my career to just keep like the best people around me." In an industry that likes to mythologise the lone artist, Whitcomb is clear that he did not build this by himself. "I'd love to say I did it all by myself, but I didn't. I've had an amazing team and a lot of really incredibly supportive people."

That support extends beyond the industry. His core family and friend group, he says, has always been there, though success has also introduced him to the strange experience of distant relatives suddenly appearing. "I'm discovering new family all the time," he says, joking about the way cousins and cousins’ cousins tend to materialize once a career starts moving. The core group, however, is what matters. It is also part of why coming back to Canada means something to him. "Canada's always really excited to see me, and I can't believe that," he says. "There's a lot of pride in being Canadian and being from Canada, so that always means a lot to me, coming back to my country and playing there."

Whitcomb has been spending much of this year in motion. He recently returned from Australia, a country he had long wanted to play, and he talks about the shows there with the satisfaction of having reached a place that once felt far away. Two nights in Melbourne stand out to him, as did Boston on a recent run. The differences between audiences interest him without becoming a grand theory. "Canadians always go super crazy. The Americans are really respectful most of the time, which is really cool. Australians and Canadians go hand in hand, and in Europe it depends on the city. They're either really calm or really fun, but both can be really good shows." For someone who once imagined a life of labour jobs, the idea that these comparisons are now part of his actual working life still seems to amuse him.

Cameron WhitcombPhotography by James Baker for Rolling Stone Canada

Outside music, Whitcomb is collecting new obsessions. He wants to get his pilot’s license "so I can fly planes and shit just for fun." He is planning to move to Orange County, California, in September, partly to be closer to the songwriting scene and partly because of the people he has met there. One of them, Robert Drenk, took him flying and left a deep impression on him. "He came from nothing and has made more money than I can perceive," Whitcomb says. "And all while doing that, he's managed to stay one of the most humble, kind and generous people I've ever met." Another friend, Sam Winkler, similarly inspires him. Whitcomb talks about these men less as industry connections and more as examples of the kind of person he wants to become. "All these guys out there just like really inspire me," he says. "So I just kind of wanted to be in that scene a little bit more."

There is an easy temptation to frame Whitcomb as an old-soul country artist because of the life he has lived, but that would miss how strange and contemporary his rise actually is. He came through Reddit, television, TikTok-era fandom and genreless streaming habits, while making songs that can sit across country, rock, folk and pop spaces without asking for permission. His taste is similarly unfussy. He listens to Colter Wall, pulls out vinyl records and lets them play through, and names Post Malone as a dream collaborator. "I like it all," he says when asked whether he prefers Malone’s older material or the newer country direction. "He can do anything, right? He's an amazing artist, and I really appreciate that."

That openness does not extend to AI in music. Asked whether he uses AI in his process, Whitcomb’s answer is immediate. "Fuck no, I've never used AI in my music and I will never," he says. But his issue is not framed as panic. In fact, he seems more irritated by artists who have made fear of AI their entire public personality than by AI itself. "I've never ever been threatened by AI," he says. "AI will never play live. It'll never be me." It is a very Cameron Whitcomb answer, half serious, half provocation, but underneath it is a belief that the live, flawed, human part of music cannot be manufactured into existence.

Cameron WhitcombPhotography by James Baker for Rolling Stone Canada

That same belief shapes how he talks about fans. As his numbers have grown and the rooms have gotten bigger, Whitcomb says he tries not to let the important things get missed. Family matters and so do the people who show up to the shows. "I try to take as much time as possible during VIP or after the show to say hi," he says. "For me, it's just another day, but for a lot of people, it's something that means a lot to them." He has little patience for artists who resent respectful fans asking for a photo. "All artists are nothing without the people who listen to their music," he says. "If you like the life that you live, be grateful for the people that put that money in your pocket."

That might be the clearest way to understand Whitcomb at this moment. Not as an artist trying to outrun his past, and not as a carefully packaged redemption story, but as someone who seems deeply aware that none of this was guaranteed. If music had not happened, he says, his life would have looked very different. "If it wasn't for music, I'd be on drugs probably still," he says. "Probably logging or pipelining or some sort of labor job." There is no self-pity in the line, only honesty. Music did not make him less blunt about who he is, it simply gave him somewhere to put the truth.

Now, as Deep Water extends his story beyond the heaviness of The Hard Way and “Kingdom of Fear” continues to push him into bigger rooms, Whitcomb appears less interested in polishing the mythology than in keeping the life around it functional. He is writing when touring allows, thinking about planes, planning a move, building a better team, getting his yard in order and trying not to lose touch with the part of himself that loved music before it became a business. "There's a lot of stuff in the works and a lot of really cool features and stuff like that," he says. The Diplo collaboration is already out in the world, more tour dates are coming, and the fall Kingdom of Fear Tour is set to carry him through another stretch of American rooms.

For the Future of Music, Whitcomb represents something more interesting than a clean breakout narrative. He is proof that the next wave of Canadian music does not have to arrive perfectly groomed, media-trained into dullness or detached from the places that made it. Sometimes it sounds like a guy from Vancouver Island who worked at McDonald’s, rode a motorcycle to construction sites, got kicked out of high school, went to alternative school, sang on Reddit, made it to American Idol, got clean, almost quit, kept going, won Junos and still answers the phone from his yard because the landscaping needs figuring out. "I'm a pretty open book," he says. For once, that does not sound like branding. It sounds like the point.

Big Sean

The first time Big Sean appeared on television, he wasn't promoting a record, celebrating a charting single or introducing himself to the world. He was just another teenager on a school trip to Toronto when someone from MuchMusic asked whether anyone in the group had a hidden talent. One classmate volunteered to recite the alphabet when Sean raised his hand and said that he rapped. Minutes later, he found himself performing live on television for the first time.

"I ended up rapping on MuchOnDemand. It was my first time being on live television, rapping, and it was unexpected," he recalls. "Some people were like, 'I think one of my classmates burped the ABCs or something,' and I was like, 'I rap.'"

At the time, it was simply another school trip. There was no reason to believe that Toronto would become a recurring part of Sean's story, yet the city has a habit of reappearing at pivotal moments in his career. Less than a decade after that impromptu television debut, he was back at MuchMusic premiering his own music videos as one of hip-hop's brightest young stars. Earlier this month, he returned again, performing at adidas' Home of Soccer during the FIFA World Cup festivities, almost twenty years after first arriving as a teenager who'd volunteered to rap because no one else would.

"I always have fun in Toronto," he says. "There's such a relationship between Toronto and Detroit in so many ways. So many people have family in Toronto and go to Toronto. I've always had a relationship with Toronto early on since, like, eighth grade. This is the first time I went out there on a class trip. It's cool. I get a sense of love. It's kind of like going to see your cousins when I go to Toronto."

Big SeanBig Sean photographed by Lane Dorsey in Toronto in July, 2026. Phoebe Philo coat, Mayer suit and VSP Consignment Gucci shoes.

For much of his career, Toronto and Detroit (Sean’s home city) have shared more than proximity. The two cities have long exchanged artists, audiences and influences, and Sean's own journey has unfolded alongside that relationship. He came of age during the final years of music television, built a following through blogs and mixtapes before streaming permanently altered the industry, and has somehow remained relevant through every shift that followed.

"I kind of caught a very special moment in culture before things completely shifted to digital," he says. "I even got to go see TRL with Kanye [West], one of the last episodes of that. I got to be on 106 & Park a few times before that ended too. I kind of caught a very special moment in culture before everything shifted to the internet."

Few artists have experienced as many different versions of the music business from the inside. Sean remembers a time when television premieres could transform a career overnight, when mixtapes travelled through blogs and forums instead of playlists, and when success was measured very differently. Yet, despite everything that's changed around him, the biggest shift hasn't been the industry itself; it's been time.

"I've given my whole life to this," he says. "I'm one step away from being a childhood star."

He signed his first record deal at eighteen, young enough for music to define almost every chapter of his adult life, but old enough, he says, to experience a childhood before fame arrived. It's something he has come to appreciate more with age, particularly after watching friends and collaborators who entered the spotlight far earlier than he did.

"I still got to protect some of my innocence," he tells Rolling Stone Canada. "When I was talking to Justin Bieber, he's given his whole life. A lot of people's childhoods, in some ways, got robbed a little bit. They had to live a more grown-up life at such an early age of managing a career and performing. So I am blessed to have gotten in when I got in. Obviously, I still feel like I have so much more to do as well. That's another beautiful part of it. Life just keeps evolving."

Big Sean Big Sean photographed by Lane Dorsey in Toronto in July, 2026. Phoebe Philo coat, Mayer suit and VSP Consignment Gucci shoes.

If the first half of Sean's career was defined by momentum, the next seems to be shaped by perspective. New music is finally on the horizon after a relatively quiet stretch, but when I ask what's occupying him most these days, it isn't the first thing that comes to mind.

"The most exciting thing happening in my life right now is... the music I'm making, is one of the things I'm most excited about because I'm kind of getting fed up with not having new music out," he says, laughing as he catches himself. "And then the most exciting thing, singular thing, is my three-and-a-half-year-old. Big boy. That's my son and also my other sun, S-U-N, because I feel like my world revolves around him just like the Earth revolves around the sun."

Music may still be the centre of Sean’s career, but it no longer sits alone at the centre of his life. Over the next several minutes, the conversation drifts naturally away from albums and performances to the everyday moments that now shape his routine. His son, he explains, has an ever-changing list of fascinations. At the moment it's volcanoes. Before that it was planets and space. Garbage trucks have become another obsession and, somewhere between all of that, he's developed into an unexpectedly gifted little athlete.

"He's amazing. He's into music, but he's into a lot of things. He's multifaceted and multi-interested in things. He really loves volcanoes right now. He's into garbage trucks and space and planets. He's a very good athlete as well. Since he was one, he started walking pretty early, and he's been on a trampoline since then, so his dexterity and his balance are really, really good. He can run real fast.”

There isn't much distinction between the way Sean talks about his son and the way he's spoken about music throughout our conversation. Both are animated by the same sense of joy.

"I'm not one of these check-in-once-a-month type dads," he adds. "I'm like a daily dad. I cook for my son. He got me being like a real chef now because he only eats yummy food, so I make sure I make the best food I can for him to his liking. I dedicate a lot of time, so it's taught me to be more intentional with my schedule."

Becoming a father hasn't simply changed Sean's life; it has changed the way he thinks about making music too. Ask whether parenthood has found its way into the studio and he isn't talking about writing songs for his son or consciously approaching records differently. Instead, he describes it as another chapter of life to draw from, one that has given him a deeper well of experience every time he sits down to write.

"I think it helps the music. I think the music is a reflection of life. If you don't have life to reflect on, then what are you really talking about? I feel like the more life I live, the more experiences I have, the more I have to say."

The music he's preparing to release next reflects that outlook. Rather than framing it as a reinvention or the beginning of another chapter, he speaks about it with the confidence of someone who no longer feels compelled to chase expectations, choosing instead to make records that honestly reflect where he is today. "What you can expect is just me applying everything that I've learned thus far, and also just expressing myself and having fun. I think you'll get a sense of where I'm at in my life when you hear it, and you'll also get a sense of tiebacks to where I'm from and also tiebacks to my upbringing."

Rather than comparing the record to his most recent work, Sean also finds himself thinking much further back, to the freedom he felt when he first started making music.

"I [also] feel like the music that I've been making lately kind of reminds me of some of my earlier work,” he says. “It's a lot of fun. There are still levels of consciousness to it because I've always been that, too. Even in songs that were turned up, I always put a level of consciousness to it too. But it's just free and fun." It's a subtle distinction, but an important one. Sean isn't trying to recreate an earlier version of himself. If anything, he's rediscovering the mindset that first made making music exciting.

That same outlook extends to the people he chooses to work with. When asked who has been inspiring him lately and the conversation quickly expands beyond his own music, becoming less about guest appearances than the relationships that continue to shape the way he works.

For someone whose catalogue spans collaborations with everyone from Eminem, Post Malone and JAY-Z to Pharrell, Calvin Harris, Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber, Sean has never approached music as though it exists within neatly defined boundaries. Rap has always been the foundation, but curiosity has shaped almost everything else. He speaks about collaborators less in terms of profile than possibility, drawn to artists who push him creatively rather than simply expanding his reach.

"Throughout my career, I’ve gotten to collaborate with a lot of incredible people," he says proudly. "I've gotten to collaborate with Calvin Harris and Katy Perry and Pharrell. I've gotten to collaborate with Justin Bieber. I've gotten to collaborate with Nas and Jay-Z and Eminem and obviously Kanye [West]. I've touched quite a few different sides of music, and that's something that I'm proud of because it never once felt forced or weird for me."

That same curiosity continues to shape the music he's making now. Rather than rattling off the biggest names in his phonebook, he begins talking about the people whose work has genuinely inspired him. Inflo is one of the first names he mentions, followed by Cleo Sol, two artists he's admired for years and still hopes to work with. "They're incredible," he says simply, before turning to another long-time collaborator.

The conversation soon shifts to Kehlani, whose collaboration with Sean on "Lights On" grew out of his work with the album's executive producer, Khris Riddick-Tynes. "I've known Kehlani for a long time, so it was great that we made that happen," he says. "I've also been working with her executive producer Khris Riddick-Tynes, who basically helped craft that whole Kehlani album."

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Then comes Leon Thomas.

The change in tone is immediate. Sean has known Thomas since long before the singer emerged as one of R&B's most exciting new voices, working with him first as a producer before eventually becoming collaborators. Listening to him describe Thomas' recent rise feels less like hearing one artist praise another than watching someone celebrate a friend finally getting the recognition they always believed was coming. "I've worked with Leon for years now, just as a producer," he says. "I'm so proud of him because he's just taking off. I remember when 'MUTT' came out, I texted him straight away. I was like, 'Bro, this one is hitting different.' We collabed on the 'Vibes Don't Lie' remix and 'Party Favors' off his album, and we've got more music coming too."

That same sense of authenticity carried into one of his most talked-about moments this year, when he made a surprise appearance during Justin Bieber's Coachella set, reuniting with the pop star years after the pair first collaborated. Midway through the performance, Sean paused to speak directly to both Bieber and the crowd, delivering an impromptu message about resilience, faith and the importance of looking after one another. The speech quickly spread across social media, with fans praising its sincerity and Bieber later calling it "beautiful."

Sean smiles as he remembers what happened afterwards. Bieber told him, "Bro, you was dropping so many bars." It's a friendship he speaks about with genuine warmth. Beyond the iconic Coachella moment and conversations, he also speaks warmly about watching Justin and Hailey step into parenthood while continuing to live under an extraordinary level of public attention.

"I'm happy for him," Sean says. "I'm happy for Hailey. I'm happy they're raising their family and doing their thing. It's beautiful to see."

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Big Sean has watched the music industry reinvent itself several times over. Rather than debating whether one era was better than another, he's more interested in how artists are navigating the one they're in now. "What excites me the most is that hip-hop [and the music industry] is in a different place," he says. "I wouldn't say weird. It's just in a different place because, for the first time, everything is accessible to the same degree and with that comes a lot of traffic."

Rather than speaking in broad industry terms, he reaches for a recent conversation that perfectly illustrates the point. One of his hairstylists had been talking about how much she loved Kehlani's music, so naturally he asked what she thought of the singer's latest album. The response caught him off guard. She hadn't listened to it because she hadn't even realised it had been released.

"You can be a fan of somebody who has such a big album promotional run and still not see it because life is happening," he says. "There's just a lot of traffic on the internet."

Sean doesn't see the shift as a good thing or a bad one. Just a different one. The battle isn't for access anymore; it's for attention. Even so, he believes artists today have more freedom than ever before. "I feel like there is an audience for everyone. People can be themselves and play to their audience instead of having to play to an algorithm. They don't have to play to having a hit record anymore. They don't have to play to having a number one song on the radio,” he says. “You just have to play to whatever satisfies you, and people can attach to that."

It's a perspective shaped by years in the industry. Long before platinum records and Grammy nominations, Sean had already built a fiercely loyal following through his Finally Famous mixtapes, often filling venues before record executives fully understood what was happening. Toronto was one of the first places where that support became impossible to ignore.

"I remember when I was doing my mixtapes and I put out Finally Famous Volume 3: Big. I had a meet and greet in Toronto and it was so packed there were thousands of people outside. Then I walked in and there were thousands of people inside. That brought me to tears because it was such a big difference from what it used to be for me."

Even now, it's one of the few stories he tells with genuine disbelief, as though that version of his career still catches him off guard.

But again, for Sean, it felt like a breakthrough, but the label saw it differently. "They were like, 'That's cool, but we still need a hit record because we're invested in you. These mixtapes are cool, but we're not making any money off DatPiff and LiveMixtapes.'"

That hit eventually arrived with "My Last," the Chris Brown-assisted single that became the commercial breakthrough his label had been waiting for. Bigger milestones followed. This week, his 2014 anthem "I Don't F**k With You," featuring E-40, was certified Diamond by the RIAA, becoming one of the biggest-selling singles of his career. Looking back, there's no bitterness in the story. It simply reflects a different set of expectations. Sean's generation was measured by radio and commercial hits. Today's artists, meanwhile, are navigating streams, engagement and algorithms that shift by the day.

That perspective also explains why Sean talks about younger artists with genuine excitement rather than competitiveness. Whether it's Leon Thomas finding his moment or producers like Khris Riddick-Tynes shaping records behind the scenes, he speaks about their success as though there's room for everyone.

Big SeanBig Sean photographed by Lane Dorsey in Toronto in July, 2026. Jacket and jeans by Re-pull, shoes by Balenciaga.

That instinct to create opportunities for other people eventually pulls the conversation back to Detroit, the city that has remained the constant throughout every stage of his career. Because for all the places music has taken him, it's home that continues to shape where he invests his time, his energy and, increasingly, his legacy.

Detroit has never been something Sean wears as part of his identity, pretty much because it's woven into the decisions he makes. Over the last few years, that commitment has become increasingly visible, whether through the Sean Anderson Foundation, community initiatives across the city or his expanding role with the Detroit Pistons (a professional basketball team based in Detroit, Michigan), where he now serves as Creative Director of Global Experience. It's a position that formalises a relationship years in the making, but one he still speaks about with the excitement of a lifelong fan.

"I used to wait outside Pistons games in the freezing cold hoping to catch Rip Hamilton walking into the arena," he says, laughing. "Just hoping to get an autograph." Years later, he's helping shape the experience around the team he once waited outside to meet. "It's a dream come true," he says. "To represent Detroit in that way... it's crazy."

The role goes well beyond appearances or ambassadorial duties. Earlier this year, Sean helped launch Creatives Across Continents, an initiative inviting artists and designers to create original work inspired by Detroit basketball. It's exactly the kind of project that sits at the intersection of everything he's become interested in over the years, bringing together music, sports, fashion, visual art and the city that continues to inspire all three.

The Pistons, however, are only one part of a much broader commitment to Detroit. Through the Sean Anderson Foundation, education has become a particular focus, with scholarship programmes, school partnerships and community initiatives designed to give young people access to opportunities that simply weren't available when he was growing up. Last year, alongside Usher, he helped launch the Detroit Entertainment Innovation Incubator at the Boys & Girls Club inside Michigan Central, a creative hub equipped with recording studios, podcast facilities, filmmaking resources and production technology that introduces students to careers far beyond the spotlight. "You don't have to be the rapper," he says. "You can be the engineer. You can be the producer. You can direct videos. You can write. There are so many different jobs in this business."

For Sean, the point has never been creating more stars. It's making sure young people know there are countless ways to build a career in music and entertainment. "I got suspended for selling CDs in school," he says, laughing. "Now there's a recording studio in that same school." He laughs at the irony. Years after getting into trouble for selling CDs, the same school now has a studio where students can create their own.

Recognition has followed along the way. Detroit has honoured him with a key to the city. There's a street bearing his name, murals celebrating his career and an official Big Sean Day. Yet those milestones seem to matter less to him than what they represent. Growing up, he remembers people questioning whether he was really from Detroit because he was born in California before moving to Michigan as an infant.

"People tell me that all the time, 'He isn't from Detroit for real. He was born in Santa Monica,'" he says with a laugh. "But I moved to Detroit when I was one month old. I had my first piece of food in Detroit. I probably opened my eyes for real for the first time in Detroit. Everything I know is Detroit."

The criticism barely registers anymore. "People are gonna say whatever they want to say," he says. "I can't even give the energy into correcting people because I have a whole mission that I'm trying to accomplish."

The answer comes without hesitation. For Sean, Detroit has never been about where he was born. It's where he grew up, where he found music and where, years later, he's chosen to invest so much of what that music has given him.

Big SeanBig Sean photographed by Lane Dorsey in Toronto in July, 2026. Jacket by Fear of God (Harry Rosen).

For all the different roles Sean occupies today, rapper, author, creative director, entrepreneur, mentor, they all seem to stem from the same instinct. He's no longer interested in creating simply for the sake of creating. Whatever he chooses to pursue has to feel like it adds something, whether that's to his own life or someone else's. Music remains at the centre of everything, but it no longer has to carry the full weight of who he is.

That philosophy eventually found its way onto the page. In 2025, Sean released Go Higher, his first book and a New York Times bestseller. Years in the making, it drew on journals, observations and personal experiences he'd been collecting long before the idea became a finished manuscript. Rather than a memoir, Sean describes it as "a book of strategy" and "a book of alignment," one he hopes can help people who feel stuck, uncertain or in need of direction.

Getting it finished, however, took a push of its own and that came during a conversation with global bestselling author and award-winning podcaster, Jay Shetty.

Sean remembers talking about the people he admired most and the conversations he always believed there would be time to have. Nipsey Hussle. Kobe Bryant, other friends and peers whose deaths had forced him to confront how quickly life can change. "I always wanted to," he recalls telling Shetty about writing a book, "but maybe just later on."

That’s when Shetty stopped him, and said, "Man, you just sat up here and talked to me about how you were supposed to hang out more with Nipsey Hussle, how you were supposed to get in the studio with Kobe and all of these things and friends you've lost. Bro, you never know. You can't count on time always being there. You have to do it. If you have the opportunity and you have the vision and foresight to do it, then you need to do it right now."

"It really struck me to the core," Sean says. "I got on it. He linked me with his publishers and we made it happen." Today, Sean sees Go Higher as another way of sharing the lessons that have helped shape his own life, something practical that people can return to whenever they need it most. "I wrote the whole book myself. I had people helping me organise it, but it's a book of strategy. It's a book of alignment. It's for people who feel stuck in any way or feel like they don't know what's next for them. It's a very useful tool to get ahead."

Finishing the book wasn't an endpoint so much as another chapter. New music is finally on the horizon, but it's only one part of a growing list of creative pursuits. "I'm excited to be the authentic me," he says. "To give new music, some of the other projects I've been working on."

That list also includes CTRL + ALT + DELETE: A Blog Era Celebration, the one-day event Sean will perform at alongside Miguel at the F&M Bank Amphitheater in Long Beach, California, this September. Bringing together fellow blog-era pioneers and longtime peers including Dom Kennedy, Curren$y, Casey Veggies, The Cool Kids, Pac Div, Chip Tha Ripper, U-N-I and Max B, the event reflects the creative community Sean has grown alongside over the years.

Another project, however, is one he can only hint at for now.

"There's a show that hasn't been announced yet, so I won't give too many details, but it's on a big network. I'm one of the main characters doing voice acting." For someone who grew up immersed in anime and animation, it's another unexpected chapter in a career that has continually expanded beyond music. "I'm a huge anime fan. I'm a huge animation fan as well," he says. "So that's a dream come true."

Big SeanPhotographed by Lane Dorsey for Rolling Stone Canada. Jacket and jeans by VSP Consignmen (Valentino).

It's hard to imagine the teenage Sean who first volunteered to rap on live television in Toronto mapping out a career quite like this. Music remains at its centre, but over the years it has become the foundation for something much broader: books, philanthropy, creative direction, community work, entrepreneurship, festivals and soon, television. None of it feels like reinvention for the sake of staying relevant. Instead, each new chapter has grown naturally from wherever his curiosity has taken him.

That's also why Sean is reluctant to pretend there's a formula for longevity. "One thing I do recognize is that everyone's story is different," he says. "Do what works for you."

It's advice he's lived by himself. Rather than following someone else's blueprint, the 38-year-old rapper has spent nearly two decades following his own instincts, allowing each chapter to unfold on its own terms. "Take advantage of every opportunity you have," he continues. "Don't be lazy with it. We have so many things at our fingertips now."

Then he distils it all into one final thought.

"My advice is to take advice with a grain of salt," he says. "Follow your intuition."

Meet the 25 artists redefining Canada's musical landscape. From breakthrough voices to genre-defying innovators, these are the creators shaping the future of music in Canada and beyond.

Parazar

Rolling Stone Canada and YouTube Canada are proud to support local creatives.

The traditional trajectory of a music career used to be relatively linear. An artist would build momentum in their hometown, expand nationally, and, with enough industry support, eventually attempt to reach audiences abroad. Today, the internet has largely erased those barriers. Artists can break through and find a global audience at any time from anywhere, opening doors to the industry for anyone to reach for stardom. A song made in Montréal can resonate just as quickly in Algiers, Hanoi, or Brussels as it does locally.

Few platforms have played a bigger role in that transformation than YouTube. Over the past twenty years, it has evolved from a simple video-hosting website into a central pillar of the modern music ecosystem. For Canadian artists, its function extends far beyond distribution. It acts simultaneously as a production hub, an educational resource, an archive, and a direct link to global audiences.

To better understand that evolution, we spoke with Montreal rapper Parazar, whose growing international audience reflects the increasingly borderless nature of online music discovery, as well as Gabriel Obadia, Head of Music at YouTube Canada, about how the platform continues to reshape the relationship between artists, audiences, and visibility.

“Oh my God, when you told me that, I immediately remembered the original logo. The brown logo, the little TV,” says Parazar with a laugh when I ask if she remembered YouTube’s original logo. Like many other creators, she first discovered it as a viewer before seeing it as a space for creation and distribution.

Over twenty years, YouTube has evolved and so has the way we use it. There are more ways than ever for fans to discover, engage and participate with music, changing how listeners become fans. At the center of it all, music videos are still the medium for fans to enter an artist’s world and become superfans. “I’ve always believed that, in terms of music, it’s extremely important to keep the concept of music videos and visuals,” she says.

For Parazar, video acts as both a promotional tool and an extension of the musical work itself. “A music video is kind of like the cover of a book. When you open a story, it gives you the image. It gives you the whole visual meaning.”

Obadia sees this evolution as part of a broader shift in how audiences engage with music online. “Back in the day, you had a handful of programmers planning out a few hours of music videos a day," he says. "Digital platforms have instead put that power in the hands of music fans from around the world, and given artists new ways to express their creativity.”

That logic shapes how music is experienced. “Your song won’t feel the same live, it won’t feel the same in the video, and it won’t feel the same in your car,” Parazar adds. YouTube becomes a space where these different interpretations coexist and where a visual translation of music becomes possible.

One of the most important opportunities for artists now is to be discovered by fans all around the world. This direct access to an international audience is crucial.

Parazar has experienced this with her audience abroad. “What we notice in certain countries like Algeria is that people are always on YouTube. They really go to YouTube to listen to music,” she explains. That interest is measurable: as of October 2025, global hours of French language watch time grew over 20% year-over-year. And in just the first half of 2025, viewers globally watched more than 9.5 billion hours of French language content.

For Obadia, that global reach is central to YouTube’s role in Canada’s music ecosystem. “What motivates me most about the future of Canada’s music industry is the rapid rise of diverse genres from artists here at home,” he says, pointing to the growth of French Canadian and Arabic hip-hop, Afrobeats, and Punjabi pop. “Artists like Parazar are proving that local sounds have deep global resonance.”

Because of YouTube’s scale, he argues, artists are increasingly able to speak directly to fans without intermediaries. “A bilingual track from Montréal blending French and Arabic can instantly find a dedicated fan base in North Africa or Europe without having to go through traditional industry gatekeepers.”

In this context, the platform acts as a primary access point to music. It allows geographically distant scenes to connect without relying on the usual structures of the industry. As Gabriel Obadia notes, it gives ‘’artists the ultimate ability to reach fans anywhere on the planet, no matter how niche their music might seem locally’’

Beyond distribution, YouTube also plays a role in artists’ development. Tutorials, technical demonstrations, and archives contribute to an accessible knowledge economy.

Parazar highlights this in her own practice. “I’ve learned so many things from the tutorials on YouTube, how to record myself, how to use Logic Pro, and everything else.” The platform becomes both a workspace and a space for visibility.

Obadia describes YouTube as “the world’s biggest library,” where artists can learn everything from beat-making techniques to video editing workflows. He also points to tools like YouTube Analytics, which allow artists to better understand their audiences and build sustainable careers independently.“We want to make sure emerging artists have a ladder to climb on their own terms,” he says.

It also serves as an active archive. To prepare for performances, Parazar revisits past footage and live recordings. “I’ll do research and look at old concert footage. I get inspired by a song or something from the show we’re putting together.”

The arrival of Shorts reflects current habits of rapid consumption. Without replacing long-form content, they coexist with it and create multiple entry points to creative work.

For Parazar, this evolution fits naturally into current practices. “Shorts on YouTube are a different format, but it’s the same kind of content that finds an audience.”

Obadia rejects the idea that short-form and long-form formats are competing with one another. “We see both formats as complementary tools for artists. Shorts act as an incredible discovery engine,” he says. “They are a low-barrier way for new artists to grow an audience and test concepts.” At the same time, he argues that long-form music videos remain essential because they “immerse fans into an artist’s creative world.”

In twenty years, YouTube has established itself as a structuring space for creation around the world. It has helped redefine access to production, distribution, and learning. For local artists like Parazar, it serves as a working tool, a showcase, and a bridge to audiences beyond traditional circuits. In that environment, artists are no longer limited by the size of their local scene. A single upload could be the spark that crosses borders, finds its community, and resonates with the world.