video review: 'CARE FOR ME' by saba

Man, this... has actually turned out to be not as controversial as I was expecting. Huh, nice to see.

But next up... man alive, I'm so damn happy I knocked it into production by executive order, this thing is something special - stay tuned!

album review: 'CARE FOR ME' by saba

Well, this has been very long in coming.

And indeed, Saba is a name that's been on my radar for some time, even despite the fact it has taken months for his album to ascend my schedule. He's loosely affiliated with many of the indie acts in the Chicago scene that I've covered - he's shown up on Chance The Rapper's Acid Rap and Coloring Book, Donnie Trumpet's Surf, and he and Noname have traded guest appearances on each other's respective projects - and while he built a fair amount of buzz off a few mixtapes, he first came to my attention proper with his 2016 debut Bucket List Project. And for the most part I did like it, but I wouldn't say it was something that really resonated with me as much as I'd like, because for as versatile as Saba was as an MC, he definitely wore his influences on his sleeve. Sure, detailed flair to his writing and he had good taste in instrumentals... but I'd struggle to say I was in a huge hurry to come back to it, and it was tricky to pinpoint why. Maybe the songs just weren't quite there yet or he hadn't quite refined his unique voice, but I did figure that'd likely come on his follow-up. And given the critical reception that CARE FOR ME has received, I had every reason to believe this would be great, so what did we get with this?