BOUNCE BACK

Last year’s New Year’s resolution still drives rapper Big Sean to muscle up to the morning

- ANDREW HEFFERNAN

BIG SEAN is having an exquisite Zen moment.

It’s a bright morning at the multi-platinum rapper’s Beverly Hills mansion, and his trainer Jerry Ford, wearing a pair of focus mitts, is bouncing about. But for 30 seconds, Sean is silent, smiling at a 152cm-tall statue of Buddha that’s smiling back.

Then he’s ready, training his eyes on Ford, raising his gloves, and throwing MMA punches, elbows and knee strikes as crisply as he was spitting rhymes in his recording studio just a few hours earlier.

“We’re in album mode right now,” Sean says during his next break, referring to his forthcoming release, rumoured to be titled Detroit II. That means most workdays end at 4am. Still, four mornings a week, he’s in the backyard with Ford. “You have to make it a priority,” Sean adds. “This is time to myself. That’s one thing I’ve realised I wasn’t getting enough of.”