Chicago rapper Saba returns with his third album, 'Few Good Things', a continuation of his quest to build a personal philosophy from a life overflowing with losses and wins in equal measure. Three years after Care For Me, a mournful response to the death of John Walt, Saba’s cousin and musical partner, Saba found the time and space to attempt something new on 'Few Good Things', a musically and philosophically distinct meditation on success and failure.
On Come My Way, Saba matches his flow to his feelings, sprinting through childhood memories during the verses and dragging out his dreams of getting rich in the choruses. 'Few Good Things' is about time, and on 'An Interlude Called Circus', Saba and his producers Daoud and daedaePIVOT share that insight with listeners through his bars and their production choices. – With pitched up vocals, Saba raps /Bout time I think it's bout time/ his flow clashing with soft chords until the beat kicks in, defining time and snapping the track into place. For listeners, time is the key to understand the album, and for Saba, to understand his memories.
'Few Good Things' picks up steam with 'Still', a reflective collaboration with 6lack and Smino, climaxing four songs later on 'If I Had a Dollar', the most melodically ambitious and emotionally evocative song on the album. Where earlier on the album Saba boasted of buying things without a care for cost, he now calls his accumulation of wealth a failure.
Take a loss take a win
Take a breath take it in
Take your time
If I had a dollar all the times I failed I’d be a rich n****
On the final two tracks, Saba shows that with time, he can now see both the good and the bad, turning wistful and nostalgic on 2012, only to end the album with realism on the title track 'Few Good Things'. For Saba, the contrast is no contradiction – it is the answer he’s been seeking all along.
Families that depend on me
Art get turn to assembly
Line every line my lineage
Glass half full
The other half was the emptiness
We turned a bunch of nothing to abundance
Few good things
8/10
Words: Tani Levitt
– – –
– – –
