Artist: Saba

Album: Few Good Things

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Background

Back in 2018, Saba made major waves with his Sophomore album, CARE FOR ME (read u/bennyandthejets17’s AOTY Recap here). CARE FOR ME contained gut-wrenching and introspective lyrics from Saba following the sudden loss of Saba’s best friend and cousin John Walter Long Jr. due to aimless violence. CARE FOR ME was a fantastic showcase of grief and pain following the loss of a loved one, and it is still a powerful listen. CARE FOR ME was written and recorded during what Saba called the “lowest point of [his] life”, and was a stark turn from his uplifting debut Bucket List Project. Later in 2018, Saba released a collection of uplifting loose singles every Friday for 5 weeks straight with Stay Right Here featuring Xaviar Ömar and Mick Jenkins, Beautiful Smile featuring IDK, Excited, Papaya featuring daedaePIVOT, and Where It’s At.

The Friday between Beautiful Smile and Excited was the first release of a PIVOT GANG song since 2013 entitled Blood. This was Saba and the rest of the PIVOT GANG gearing up to release their album You Can’t Sit Here in early 2019 with features from Smino, Kari Faux, Mick Jenkins, Jean Deaux, Femdot, and more including a posthumous feature from Walt himself. The album cover finds the crew dressed in suits with a portrait of Walt hanging in the background. The album is a fun collection of songs making plenty of pop culture references from cartoons, animes, and movies.

In 2020, Saba would begin another loose single collection dropping 3 double singles bi-monthly. The first pair would be Mrs. Whoever and Something in the Water featuring Denzel Curry. The second pair would be So and So and Areyoudown Pt. 2 featuring Tobi Lou. The last set contained Ziplock and Rich Don’t Stop. A few of these tracks found Saba back in a more melancholic mood with songs like Mrs. Whoever and So and So, but Something in the Water and Areyoudown Pt. 2 is similar to the loosies from late 2018.

Following 2018, Saba also found himself hopping onto a bunch of other rap and R&B songs. Saba made an appearance on Noname’s Room 25 with the song Ace which also featured Smino. The trio announced an upcoming collaboration album under the name Ghetto Sage that has yet to release to this day. Saba and Smino both got a mainstream look with an appearance on Dreamville’s Revenge of the Dreamers III on the song Sacrifices with J. Cole and EarthGang. Smino and Saba continued to work with each other on the track Plead the .45th for the Judas and the Black Messiah soundtrack. Saba also collaborated with Aminé, Cautious Clay, Audrey Nuna, Lute, Patrick Paige II, and many others. Lastly, Saba teamed up with Apple Music to release Black Astronaut in celebration of Juneteenth.

As 2021, came to a close Saba announced the album Few Good Things would release next year and released the first single entitled Fearmonger featuring Daoud. Saba would release four singles in total before the release of Few Good Things including Stop That, Come My Way with Krayzie Bone of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, and Survivor’s Guilt with fellow Chicago rapper G Herbo. Few Good Things finally released on February 4th with Saba putting out a message reading “Now, let me challenge you to actually listen. To words, to music, to stories. I challenge you not to come in with preconceived notions of what I’ve done in the past and use that to dictate what my next work will be. I challenge you not to compare me to people who are not doing what I’m doing.”

Review

The album opens with the track Free Samples featuring an opening by Cheflee. The track builds on Cheflee’s vocals and a spacious guitar loop until Saba comes in after the first minute of the track. Through his short opening verse, Saba reminisces about his childhood home and the houses he and his relatives lost. The track ends with the lyrics

I tried that invincible shit, but the principle is

When there’s n****s defendin’ your wig, then it’s a pendulum shift

I tried to spend a lil’ less like a minimalist

But then I can confess that this gets harder the bigger you get

It is important to remember this set of lyrics for later. In addition, those lyrics go straight into the song One Way or Every N***a With a Budget where Saba talks about the normal day occurrences he deals with following his financial gain over the years including buying game controllers when he loses them, buying pasta in which he cannot pronounce the name correctly, sending money to his mom, and feeling different than his white neighbors in the rich neighborhood he lives in. The term one-way street is used as a way to show him giving things up to others even if they may not reciprocate those materials back, including taking care of his family and his buddies who need financial support. I think this track works as a great counterpart to the final lines of Free Samples where Saba talks about trying to be a minimalist in spending, but here, Saba talks about all the money he plans to spend over and over.

The track abruptly changes into the track Survivor’s Guilt featuring G Herbo. In the YouTube audio’s description, Saba wrote” Sheltered and innocent and guilty by association. When you see enough of your friends go, you learn the true difference whereas before you could only imagine.” This track is a left-field turn for Saba as he has never really done a song on a trap beat before, but it feels important in the context of the album. Here, Saba talks about the desperation people will go through to try and make it out and get rich. Saba mentions the heavy violence Chicago faces which includes mentioning the death of his cousin and the trauma many residents of the city face, what “eating” is like when the family is starving, the fetishizing of gang violence, and how people keep hustling to hopefully make it rich. G Herbo’s verse doesn’t necessarily fit the themes of the song, but he sounds pretty cool on the track, and his double album from this year had the exact same name. G Herbo was one of the biggest faces to come out of the entire Chicago Drill scene so to see him hop on a track that discusses the grief and loss from that exact scene is pretty interesting.

an Interlude Called ‘Circus’ is a personal favorite of mine. The track’s short runtime is about how you may take your highest moments for granted. You could blink and it could be over. (Blink, motherfucker). You can’t let those moments go to waste. I think the “This Chicago” tag adds a real stark contrast to the uplifting style of the track. The Chicago drop was common in 2010 in a lot of Chief Keef and Fredo Santana tracks. The tag contrasts the positive track giving the track a slightly eerie feeling with how gritty the tag is.

Fearmonger had a grasp on me at the end of 2021 and early 2022. The track is funky and groovy. Saba stated that “At the time of making this record I was beginning to realize how big of a hold fears actually had on me. With big decisions to make, I was never sure if I was doing the right thing. Fearing if I was actually doing enough. I’m saying we’re embedded with this “irrational fear”. The song takes this concept and kind of turns it slightly abstract by assigning a character to “Fearmonger”. I’ve never made a record that sounded anything like this and part of the fun of releasing music is to create worlds sonically and have people trust you to show them around your own imagination.” He also dropped Fearmonger as the first single to the album as it was the polar opposite of CARE FOR ME. He did not want fans to expect another CARE FOR ME, so he nipped that belief in the bud with the first single. The song discusses the fear of losing money and going broke even with the money he’s gained from rapping due to Saba’s spending habits.

The track Fearmonger is followed by the third single Come My Way featuring the legendary Krayzie Bone of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. This was Saba’s take on a “poverty song”. Saba said ““All I’m doing [is] thinking how to get some money, and then we’ll be good.” A false statement, but one that I believed at a point, and many others believe right now. This song also takes place in that nostalgic kind of setting. I’m describing many things that are normal on the west side of Chicago so that it plays like just any other day. Pretty stagnant but has so much life. “We ain’t got no time to relax.” A harsh reality for so many people experiencing this type of poor. The focus is on work and survival.” The song has an uplifting and motivating tone just talking about one day we’ll be good once we get some money. He also reminisces on his early life in Chicago. Krayzie Bone’s verse adds to the theme of the track, talking about how he’s going to be the one who keeps hustling and innovating over everyone else. It’s a really nice track.

Still features both 6LACK and Smino. I think the song has a strong nostalgic feeling to it. Something about this track strikes an emotional cord with me as we all grow up year after. Saba’s verse talks about a relationship not wanting to let go and lose its grip. Smino comes in like butter discussing a breakup and all the things left behind except for the love he still holds onto. This song is great.

Saba said ​a Simpler Time is “a song where I feel like shit is moving and it’s changing. That’s the constant throughout my life and everybody else’s is that something is changing. I think you take for granted that simple shit — being able to relax, being able to work, even. There are some jobs that I get a sense of nostalgia thinking about, or just random, miserable times that were awful, but there’s some beauty in it, where we managed to make that fun somehow.” This album focuses very heavily on reminiscing on the past and this song is one of the highlights of that concept. Saba and Merba both discuss the past and easy times as well as an outlook on the future and what comes next in life. The key change at the end of the song is beautiful and really elevates the song past another level.

Soldier features the entirety of PIVOT GANG including a verse from Joseph Chilliams. Saba’s verse builds a great story about the idea of one day raising a child getting cut short due to being killed on the streets becoming “an example” of violence. He uses metaphors of war and the army saying that leaving his family is similar to being a soldier. Joseph Chilliams continues with the metaphors of war discussing violence in Chicago trying to avoid the crossfire. Frsh Waters and MFnMelo both continue the theme of two tracks on the chorus, bridge, and the fantastic outro. This track seems very topical with the death of PIVOT GANG’s very own Squeak who got shot down in August of last year at only 26 years old. This track is a great tribute to the members of PIVOT who are no longer with the group.

If I Had A Dollar features Benjamin Earl Turner and is about how failure leads to success and how each failure helps one grow into their next endeavors. When asked about this song Saba said “If you believe you failed, then you failed, and if you believe that you didn’t fail, then you didn’t fail. I think more often than not, failure leads you to your next victory, so it’d be hard to really view failure as failure and not just like lessons or steps that get you to where you want to be.” Benjamin Earl Turner comes in the back end of the track and he drives the track home talking about all the burdens he faced along the way, but how he kept striving and moving forward and prevailing.

Stop That was the second single and the pressure Saba puts into his own head after making it in the music-sphere. Saba said “I feel like more often than not, we let our own judgment of ourselves knock our confidence off before anyone else even offers any feedback. Our own insecurities ring really loudly in our heads, to the point where we make ourselves smaller before giving anyone else the chance to. This is something that I feel like I found myself beginning to do over the years. Hiding from the uncomfortable moment. And this song works as my noticing and correcting that.” The second verse on the track focuses heavily on that topic with the pressure Saba feels like he puts on himself and the weight of success pressing on his shoulders.

The final stretch of tracks starting with Make Believe really sails the album home and raises the album up to new highs. Make Believe marks Saba’s first collaboration with Fousheé. The song starts with voicemails from Saba’s mother before Saba’s verse talking about how far he has come as a musician but how much he realized he misses his family and his mother. He also discusses the grief of the loss of others and how the fear of death means so little to him when everyone around him is dying. Fousheé comes in on the outro talking about pressure and how we are all afraid to lose “things”. Whether that’s money or the people around us.

2012 is similar to ​a Simpler Time in which Saba reminisces on his earlier life through a more positive lens compared to CARE FOR ME. His first verse focuses on an early crush of his and their shared interest in music while the second focuses on his relationships with his friends including Squeak. He told the Rolling Stones that when he played Squeak the entire album, Squeak broke down into tears specifically on this song which he said he was “talking about him because he stayed with us briefly. It’s just such an eerie thing to have played all of that, and then I don’t even think it might have been two weeks later to get the call that I got. It’s just fucking unreal still. But the beautiful part about making an album like this is…” Day Wave’s contribution is more on the background melodies but enhances the melancholy of the song.

Saba ends the album with the title track of Few Good Things. Throughout the track’s 7 minutes, Saba wraps up a lot of the concepts mentioned on the albums: life and death, poverty, the past, and the future, the family, and seeing the good with the bad. This track really nails a concept with me about living in a world with grief, but still finding the beauty in the world around us for better or for worse. There’s guilt, there’s fear, and there are bad times but you still find peace in the few good things you see. Even when there’s gang violence all around the city of Chicago, it is still easy to find the positives in the world. Black Thought comes in halfway through the track talking about growing up and the influence his mother had in his life and his upbringing in south Philadelphia nailing the theme of the family from the album. Saba wraps the track by bringing back the closing lines from Free Samples and wrapping up the concept of money and poverty. He discusses how it is important to care for his family, and how little money means to him when all he really wants is to breathe the same air as others after his entire race has been drowning for centuries through slavery and racism. Saba went from having nothing to having abundance. He has a few good things in life. It is a beautiful closer.

Favorite Lyrics

I tried that invincible shit, but the principle is

When it’s n****s defendin’ your wig, then it’s a pendulum shift

I tried to spend a little less like a minimalist

But then I can confess that this gets harder the bigger you get

Saba, Few Good Things and Free Samples

All these bodies droppin’, same blocks that we played tag

For some old shit, they wanted they payback

So we escape it all in the booth with the playback

‘Cause this the only place that we knew you were safe at

Saba, 2012

‘Cause to play the part of father is a sacred art to toddlers

City made a mark upon us, I’ma say that I’m a father

All I can do is pray that they don’t make me an example

‘Cause safety is something that is not here like a bantu

It’s like I’m drafted and I gotta leave the family

I’m just hopin’ I return with all my body parts attached to me

Saba, Soldier

I’m the one that paid my sister tuition, I should probably go to the meetings

My grandpa smilin’ with no teeth in, my cousin still supposed to be h-

Saba, Survivor’s Guilt

Stilliam Shakespeare, no eraser, I wrote this verse in stone

Sculpt the horoscope, I’m morse code, still tapped in with your hoe (With your hoe)

Smino touch the soul (Soul)

Smino, Still

So I can duck the draft and remain intact

In camouflage, I’ll still be a snack

Be a star in the desert, like the Bible

Like beautiful girls that have dudes suicidal

Joseph Chilliams, Soldier

Questions

How does an album like Few Good Things compare to CARE FOR ME?

Where do you think this album ranks among Saba’s big 3?

Do you think an album as feature heavy as Few Good Things weighs down the main artist’s contributions or does it help bring a stronger light to their voice and message?

Where do you think Saba is going to go artistically following this album?

Following an album as dark as CARE FOR ME, how does this album differ sonically and where does this album seem to find similar roots to CARE FOR ME?