SABA PIVOT

Saba Pivot (but known just as Saba), born Tahj Malik Chandler, is a Chicago-based Hip Hop and Rap artist and record producer that has encapsulated grief, melancholy, and some positivity in his most recent works. Saba, the rapper, co-founded the Pivot Gang, a music collective with Joseph Chilliams (his brother), a friend MFn Melo, and his cousin John Walt, who was fatally stabbed in 2017.

The effects of that tragedy stayed with the artist, Saba, and his album Care for Me, released in 2018, was a direct response to the event and what it was like for him to lose a loved one in a brutal manner like that.

While Care for Me wasn’t his debut album (Bucket List Project from 2016 was), this was the album that brought Saba into the limelight. The album received critical acclaim for being a complex collection of music pieces that were an honest expression of sadness.

The artist used this album to express how he processed this tragedy amid other life challenges that didn’t make moving forward any easier. At the same time, he also touched upon the prevalent systemic injustice for racial minorities, which made it challenging for his cousin and his family to get the justice necessary for the tragic event.

There was raw emotion in those tracks, and that helped bring a high degree of earnestness to the listeners. While the grief and melancholy could be suitable for certain occasions for the listeners, the authenticity made more people want to give him a chance.

The number of listeners of his music on Spotify is indicative of how much of a lasting impact this African-American artist has made on people’s lives. At the time this piece was published, Saba had nearly 2.5 million monthly listeners, who were mostly from the United States. In addition to that, the artist had over 570,000 followers. One of his songs, Photosynthesis, also crossed the 100 million plays mark, and many of his other songs are already in the millions.

Some of the songs that have millions of plays are from his latest release, an album titled, Few Good Things. Care for Me was not the only album that was directly related to the death of his cousin John. However, this latest album, released on Feb 4, 2022, has a shift in perspective regarding the tragedy.

While the 2018 album was solely an expression of grief and pain, the new one is about moving forward while remembering some of the more positive aspects of his relationship with his cousin. And he does so with softer and melodic vocals as opposed to the raw intensity that was present in Care for Me.

That is, of course, not to say that there is a lack of authenticity in this new album. That is still undoubtedly there. However, his expression and outlook on the event are different, and the way he chooses to express it in terms of melody and dynamics is what helps create a sound that is still real, still captivating, and still entertaining.