If your Twitter feed consists of any percentage of hip-hop fans, then you have no doubt been inundated over the last 16 hours with posts about Kendrick Lamar's verse on the recently Funkmaster Flex-premiered "Control." The verse has instantly taken on such stature among the internet's rap contingent that it's already being referred to simply as "The Kendrick Verse" and being treated as biblical scripture. Even the afternoon after it leaked, trending topics on my timeline currently include "#Control," "#KendrickDidntCallOut," and the humorously cumbersome "#twitpicyourreactionafterhearingkendricksverse." (Some samples of the latter.) Not even the Breaking Bad premiere the night before seemed to have inspired this level of social media mania.

Despite all the rhapsodizing the song has already inspired, there's one name you won't find in too many of its reaction tweets: Big Sean, the actual lead artist on the song, and the guy whose Hall of Fame album it was apparently recorded for (but will not be appearing on, due to "sample clearance issues"—bummer). Indeed, most of the tweets you'll find that bother to mention Big Sean are in reference to how badly Kendrick destroyed him on the track, and how miserable Sean must have been to hear the two verses in succession. (Some more samples.) As if the mere disparity in verses wasn't enough, Kendrick even calls Sean out on his own song--respectfully, in a list of rappers who he admires but plans to body on his way to the top, but a call-out nonetheless. Tough stuff for Detroit's almost-finest.

And it's true that it's hard to listen to the two verses back to back and not see Kendrick as the superior rapper, even if his purposefully growly voice on the track is a little too Christian Bale in Batman Begins ("SWEAR TO ME!!!!") for our tastes. It's just the latest rung on the latter Kendrick is climbing to the apex of the hip-hop world, with Jay-Z (who he recently sparred with on his "Bitch Don't Kill My Vibe" remix, and whose "Where I'm From" he prominently references here) seemingly the only other rapper he's content to share a level with. He wants to be Paul McCartney, a James Bond, a Kobe Bryant during his uncoachable period. Based on his verse here and the reception it's getting, it's only a matter of time before Kendrick gets there, if he isn't there already.

Big Sean, on the other hand, has had a pretty rough go it trying to get respect from the hip-hop cognoscenti. On the surface, he's one of the biggest rappers in the game, familiar enough to pop audiences to appear as a guest rapper on singles by Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande, while respected enough among peers to appear on tracks by top-tier rappers like Kanye West, Lil Wayne, and Jay-Z. He's had a handful of big radio hits as a lead artist (though usually not without a high-profile guest or two), his first album sold decently (though not spectacularly) and he's appeared twice on MTV's Top Ten Hottest Rappers in the Game list (though not yet in the top five). Basically, he's doing alright for himself.

Talk to any rap critic or self-styled hip-hop head about Big Sean, though, and the discussion changes significantly. For a number of reasons, none of the serious rap fans seem to take Big Sean seriously. He can be a little over-reverential, both towards his hip-hop idols (Eminem, 2Pac and Biggie all get shoutouts in "Control") and his contemporary mentors and general betters (Kanye and his G.O.O.D. Music label get a quick mention, almost out of contractual obligation). He can rely too heavily on his trademark exhortations ("Woah!," "Swerve!," "I dooo iiitttt!!!!," "Oh gawd!") to the point where their insertion starts to feel unnecessarily self-conscious. And arguably his two highest-profile verses to date, on "Mercy" and his own top ten hit "Dance," were both all about asses, in a way that felt slightly gratuitous even by hip-hop standards. (Not to mention that he was also showed up by other rappers' superior verses on both songs.)

Part of this lack of respect, though, is for measures beyond Big Sean's control. For one, he's kind of a goofy looking dude, with his thin mustache and other connecting facial hair combining with his unnaturally wide smile to make him look like a sleazy bachelor with a wide array of crappy pick up lines. (And hopefully, most of them would be better than "Slob on my knob / Like it's corn on the cob," from Sean's guest verse on The-Dream's "Pussy.") And for another, he has a natural over-exuberance to him, which makes him always sound really pumped to be a famous rapper, the kind of eagerness that isn't normally associated with any kind of cool, especially in a Jigga-run hip-hop universe.

However, I do believe there is room in hip-hop for one guy who's just happy to be there. The best Big Sean songs are always the ones where he most shows that gratitude at being invited to the party, from breakout single "My Last" to Finally Famous closer "So Much More" (which contains a long spoken-word outro where Sean talks about listening to Kanye, Pharrell and Wayne on the way to school growing up) to his verse here on "Control," where he aspires to own a crib like B.I.G.'s in the "Juicy" video. There's nothing wrong with rappers loving hip-hop and being glad to be even a small part of the genre's history, and Sean is good at choosing life-affirming-sounding beats to rap over—check the recent "Fire" for another good example—making his stories of victory feel legitimately triumphant. It's hard to imagine Sean having the ruthless ambition to call out peers the way Kendrick does, but if Sean is happy in his "Juicy" house without having destroyed his enemies to get there, why bother?

And even if Sean is occasionally overly clever with wordplay, few contemporary rappers are as proficient at it as he is. It's evident on "Control," with his boasts of "You gon' get this rain like it's May weather," punning off both the dual meanings (weather and strip clubs) of "raining" and "May weather" the meteorological phenomenon with Mayweather the boxer, and the way he refers to himself as an "OG," then rhymes that with "Go get more G's," benefiting from both of the most common rap usages of the letter "G." It might seem a little groan-worthy when written out, but Sean usually hits you with so many of these hip-hop quotables per verse that the thought that went into them has to impress at least a little bit. Can't say the dude's not trying, anyway.

Finally, it's also worth pointing out that even if Sean occasionally seems overly indebted to his influences, it's not like he's had zero impact on rap himself. He's even gotten credit for helping to popularize the occasionally maddening but undeniably pervasive style known most commonly as "Hashtag rap," with his "Supa Dupa" being cited by Drake as the song that really kicked off the trend, which then spread its way to pretty much the entire Young Money team. Some might not see that as a positive influence on the genre necessarily, but when the biggest rappers in the game are knowingly biting your style, you're probably doing something right. At the very least, it's something that shouldn't be totally ignored.

Sean's certainly not on Kendrick's level at the moment, certainly, and likely never will be. But we here at Popdust do want to extend our sympathies to the Sean Don for "Control" temporarily reducing him to an internet punchline, since he's still a pretty good rapper, and one who doesn't need to be competing with the genre's greats to have cultural value. Not everyone gets to be Paul McCartney, and if Sean is content with being more of a Ringo, that should be just fine for him, and just fine for us.