Rantz: ‘Damn, Seattle!’ — Rapper Big Sean stunned, calls out open-air crack use downtown

Big Sean came to Seattle to perform, but he also ended up delivering a brutally honest observation that should shame every single city leader who still pretends our streets aren’t drowning in chaos.

At the White River Amphitheatre last week, the Detroit-born rapper told the crowd about what he saw during a walk back to his hotel: a young woman smoking “crack” out in the open, with children nearby, and police officers just feet away.

“Seattle, you know, we was in Seattle all day yesterday, and we went and got some Thai food. I [bleep] with the Thai food,” he told the crowd. “We went to our little spot, and I was like, you know, ‘I want to walk back to the hotel.’ And it was a couple miles, and we walked back, and I haven’t seen this… I went to high school in Detroit, in, like, a kind of a crazy neighborhood… I haven’t seen this since high school. We saw a young lady doing crack. I know it sounds crazy! With kids around! And she whipped the pipe out and was doing crack, and there were cops around. And I was like, ‘Damn, Seattle. I didn’t know Seattle was like that.'”

Is this what we want Seattle to be known for?

This is how outsiders see Seattle now — not as the Emerald City, but as an open-air drug den. What used to be the stereotype of a struggling inner city is now our brand.

Big Sean wasn’t exaggerating, though it was almost certainly fentanyl and not crack being smoked. Anyone who’s walked through downtown, Capitol Hill, or the International District knows it. Drugs are smoked in plain sight. The smell of fentanyl hangs in the air. Families walk past men slumped over in doorways or women shooting up at bus stops. This is our reality, and now it’s national news again — this time because a celebrity said the quiet part out loud.

Seattle politicians should be humiliated. But they don’t seem to mind.

Seattle is the result of failed policies

 

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For years, they’ve assured us their “harm reduction” strategies would make things better. They handed out free needles and pipes, decriminalized drug possession, and made arrests nearly impossible. They called it compassion. What it actually did was turn our sidewalks into places where kids watch addicts light up crack pipes next to them. Big Sean didn’t tell a wild story — he gave a field report on what progressive policies look like in practice.

The worst part? Police were nearby and did nothing. That’s not the officers’ fault — they’ve been stripped of tools to intervene. Laws are written to protect addicts from consequences, not to protect children from trauma or neighborhoods from decline.

Big Sean’s shock wasn’t just at the woman smoking crack, but at the normalization of it all. Nobody stopped her. Nobody seemed to care. That’s Seattle in 2025: we’ve surrendered to dysfunction.

Shamed into action?

It takes a rapper from Detroit to shame us into acknowledging what we already know.

Our leaders have failed. Our city is broken. And until Seattle voters hold them accountable, nothing changes. Tourists will keep leaving horrified, artists will keep telling stories like this from the stage, and families will keep avoiding the city they once loved.

Big Sean came here to rap. Instead, he gave us a mirror. Seattle should be embarrassed by what he saw — because he’s right. We are “kind of messed up here.” And until we admit it, the only people celebrating are the ones cashing in on failed policies and the ones lighting up pipes on our sidewalks.

Listen to The Jason Rantz Show on weekday afternoons from 3 p.m. – 7 p.m. on Seattle Red on 770 AM (HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast here. Follow Jason Rantz on X, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook.

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