Bucket List Project to CARE FOR ME: Evolution through Loss
Saba, one of my favorite artists on the forefront of the Chicago music scene, released two seminal albums in the stretch of time since I started listening to him in 2016. In 2016, it was Bucket List Project, which detailed his experiences growing up in Austin — an homage to his bucket list, as he claims on the track California: “You know the bucket list, I finally climbed the rock, made it to the top of the precipice/I came from the pessimism of inner city as it is.” Saba places Bucket List Project in diametric opposition to his 2018 release of CARE FOR ME, however. CARE FOR ME mediates some significantly grievous and dark themes induced by the loss his cousin in February 2017, when his cousin and mentor John Walt was murdered after a confrontation on the train.
Saba lost his cousin a little over a year before the release of CARE FOR ME in April 2018, although the album is clearly an homage to Walt’s influence as well as a means of reconciling his own traumas. The difference is stark, even in album design; the colorful tones of Bucket List Project starkly contrast with the grey hues among Saba’s pensive figure sitting rigidly upon a table, arms crossed and eyes down.
That being said, Saba released CARE FOR ME at an appropriate time in my life — it was a period in which I was struggling with my own anxieties. Songs such as BUSY/SIRENS cover themes that I deeply felt myself. On this track, Saba poignantly speaks to the tendency to self-isolate when coping with trauma associated with loss and grief, highlighting its ease in a world in which we’re all connected mostly through technology: I’m so alone, but all of my friends / But all of my friends got some shit to do / Yeah, all ’em got plans / I call ’em, I’m bad at texting / They never cross me like bad pedestrians”
At the conclusion of this first verse, Saba mourns his cousin’s death and the feelings of loneliness that cannot be remedied by friends nor family: “Jesus got killed for our sins, Walter got killed for a coat / I’m tryna cope, but it’s a part of me gone / In this packed room I’m alone”
Saba dedicates the entirety of PROM/KING to memorializing his cousin, ruminating on his earliest memories with Walt up until his death. On PROM Saba details his cousin getting him a date for his high school prom and contemplates the importance of family, while KING details the moments before discovering Walt’s death, climaxing as he mentions the call he received from his mother: “Ten minutes into the session, I got a call from a number / That I don’t got saved, but I answer anyways / She says, “Hello, Malik, have you or Squeak / Talked to my son today? He was just on the train”
Saba ends his verse committed to finding Walt, “wherever you are”.
The John Walt Foundation was formed shortly after his death. Its impetus is to “embolden the creative soul of every young artist” by pairing professional artists with aspiring youth, and every year Saba and the rest of the hip hop collective Pivot Gang hosts John Walt Day to honor his legacy; all proceeds go to the foundation. I’ve attended JWD the past couple of years with my close friends, and I urge you all to check it out if you enjoy Saba’s music (or the rest of Pivot Gang — they’re a great collective.)
