"Care for Me" Saba

Graham Craycraft

“Care for Me” is the second official album by Chicago based rapper Saba released on April 5, 2018. Saba had early underground success with his 2013 mixtape project “ComfortZone” and a feature on Chance the Rapper’s “Acid Rap” song “Everybody’s Something.” “ComfortZone” was my first prolonged exposure to Saba and I was immediately drawn in and held consistently through that work. Although Saba has had a hard time really making his name in the world of ever growing hip-hop rap, he is putting out stuff that is better than any of the trap garbage that the rap scene is being tortured with. Saba is a groovy hip-hop and rap artist whose lyrics are as interesting and creative as his lilting beats.

“Care for Me” has the same kind of vibe that Saba is known for, but he steps up the flow and tricks in each song. Saba, like other Chicago based rappers of this current time such as Chance the Rapper, keeps a continuous flow that at one moment contradicts the beat, and the next moment plays so well with it. Songs like “LIFE,” “PROM / KING,” and “LOGOUT (feat. Chance)” are all around great songs that have a beat good enough to listen to without words, and the lyrics real enough that it feels like a breath of fresh air. In another song, “GREY,” Saba talks about what the rap industry used to expect from artists and how it has changed throughout the major generations. Saba sees the industry and the fans originally wanting pure hip-hop, then out-of-bounds gorilla rap, transforming into today where he sees people wanting drug slingers and drug users in the forefront of the rap game.

Saba dedicates the album to his cousin and good friend who was stabbed to death in February of 2017. He briefly mentions the stabbing in “LIFE,” but really gets into it in “PROM / KING.” Despite all these horrible things Saba has witnessed he still claims that there is “heaven all around me,” in the song of that name. Saba ends the album with this song that seems to be fading and gently carries off leaving the album with a feeling of peace and hopefulness. Although not every song on this album is a hit, as a whole it is an impressive composition. Saba is definitely showing himself to be a real player in the rap game and not just another repetitive trap banger artist. The album works well as a unit and should be listened to as such. I hope he begins to have further success as an artist on his own label and I hope to see more of him in the years to come.

Give this album a listen as I highly recommend it if you are into groovy rap with lyrics that actually mean something, and mean something important.