Saba‘s been on a lot of your favorite records streaming out of Chicago. His turn on Chance’s “Angels” turned heads for being the upbeat, two-step, church banger we all didn’t know we needed. He makes his own soft-as-candlelight tunes, though, and this one is a standout. Not only for exposing what we all know about hood geography, but for bringing Noname along to drop poetry like, “They kept the melting pot inside the slave plot, watch/They gentrified your neighborhood, no need for cops, watch.” Ugh, she’s so great.

In New York, where I’m from, you’d drive along Linden or Springfield Blvd and see this setup. Church, liquor store and repeat. Blocks and blocks you’d drive into the heart of Queens and it’d be right there: What the world thought belonged in those neighborhoods because of who lived there. Chicago has become a microcosm for that sort of purposeful, policy-driven urban decay, and hip-hop has been its mouthpiece.

So it’s hard not to love this song, not only for its great production and poignant artistry, but for speaking on the Chicago they know the way they know how.

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Saba

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