Most people don't realize until years after they've flown the coop exactly how much of an influence their parents had on them. It's not all as mundane as knowing to reflexively put the toilet seat down after going to the bathroom, either; some of it has real, tangible effects on what one chooses to do for a living. Big Sean didn't realize it, but the music his mother played when he was a child would end up influencing his artistic evolution later in life. Citing her "great taste," he remembers her playing acts like the Temptations. "It's good because a lot of that good music I love now I hated then," he says. "I don't really listen to rap too much. I listen to the oldies—people like Marvin Gaye, Al Green."In those days, he was trying to focus on his own music. "I was recording since I was 12 and I started going to this radio show every Friday night to battle rap MCs," he says. "Whoever would win the battles would get the rap on air at the radio." That eventually led to the fated first meeting with Kanye West, whom he rapped for after those years of practice. "If I didn't goto that station every week, I wouldn't have built up the confidence to rap for him and do, like, deliver," he says. It was all preparation for that one moment, though he couldn't have known that while he was just going through the paces of getting better. "You look back at those times and it seems like it was yesterday, but it means so much," he says.Not that anyone else thought it would pay off that effectively. "Nobody believed me," he says with a laugh. "I was like I just got off the phone with Kanye West and they said 'Yeah, right.'" They probably believe him now.