♪ I got angels runnin' 'way ♪
♪ I got demons huntin' me ♪
♪ I know Pac was 25 ♪
♪ I know Jesus 33 ♪
♪ I tell Death to keep a distance ♪
♪ I think he obsessed with me ♪
- [Narrator] At 23, Saba knows tragedy,
but more importantly, triumph.
Hailing from the west side of Chicago,
Saba has grown from local open mics to Lollapalooza stages.
The shy nine-year-old who learned how to rap
listening to Bizzy Bone's verse on "Notorious Thugs"
is now touring nationally.
On Thursday, April 5th, Saba released "Care for Me."
Poignant, claustrophobic, and vulnerable,
the album sees the west side artist turning insular
and asking, "When the tours end, the album's finished
and the people you love become casualties to your city,
who will care?"
- I made the album in a time where
it didn't feel like I was that cared for
and "Care for Me", in a sense,
was me reminding myself that people care, you know?
There's a strong support system around me
and when tragic things happen,
sometimes it's easy to feel alone going through it
and that moment was when I made the album.
- [Narrator] One source of Saba's support system
is Pivot Gang.
He describes the group of friends and family
as a collective of rappers, DJ's and artists
from the west side of Chicago.
Their goal? Taking things one step at a time.
The "pivot" in Pivot Gang comes from
a season five episode of "Friends."
The metaphor highlights the importance
the collective puts on adaptability.
- Pivot! Pivot!
- Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!
- My brother's like... He's a wacky individual, man.
But he was watching an episode of "Friends",
and they were moving a couch up some steps.
They had to yell, "Pivot!"
He ends up sampling it and starting a song like that.
And in it, he had a bar along the lines of,
in fact, exactly what he said,
"This the friends movement, movin' couches.
Call us the Pivot Gang."
And since that day, we pretty much, you know?
We just been Pivot Gang.
We don't really look back on it.
- [Narrator] Tragically, Pivot Gang lost member
"Dinner with John," AKA John Walt,
as a result of a fatal stabbing in February 2017.
The loss of John and how Saba deals with the ensuing trauma
is the nucleus of "Care for Me."
Throughout the album, Saba juxtaposes
the death of Walt against the story of Jesus.
It's his way of reckoning with how someone so close
could die over something so meaningless.
♪ Jesus got killed for our sins ♪
♪ Walter got killed for a coat ♪
♪ I'm tryin' to cope ♪
♪ But it's a part of me gone ♪
♪ And apparently I'm alone ♪
- You know, they say Jesus died for our sins.
That's a thing that is a common belief.
My cousin was killed for a coat, you know?
It was just comparing, I guess, the...
You know, you see how small something really is, you know?
A fucking coat, you know?
I guess that was the real reason,
to show the opposites, like there's
the sin of all man ever,
and then there's something so small as a coat.
- [Narrator] Despite moments of grief and desperation,
Saba's spirituality runs deep.
He's featured on songs like Chance the Rapper's "Angels,"
and the last song on his album
speaks to how Heaven is always around us.
The two friends have come a long way.
This is their first collaboration on 2013's "Acid Rap."
♪ City's so damn great, I feel like Alexander ♪
♪ Wear your halo like a hat ♪
♪ That's like the latest fashion ♪
♪ I got angels all around me ♪
♪ They keep me surrounded ♪
- I didn't know Chance the first time we collabed at all.
Actually, to this day, I never even asked him
where he got my number from.
He just texted me out of the blue one day
to get on "Acid Rap," and obviously we knew of each other,
just because locally in the city,
we were both of similar backgrounds,
going to the same libraries and stuff.
We had met,
but prior to me doing a feature on "Acid Rap,"
we didn't have a history of working together.
We didn't grow up together or anything like that,
like a lot of people think.
- [Narrator] After years of grinding,
it finally feels like Saba's moment.
The rapper who cut his teeth at the same open mics
as Chance, No Name and Vic Mensa,
is now getting his moment to shine.
The shy kid from the west side
isn't afraid to sing their praises,
but now, people are also singing his.
- I thought No Name was going to be
the greatest rapper of all time.
Everybody knew it from when he was 16, you know?
And everybody knew Chance was going to be super famous, too.
But yeah, honestly, it doesn't feel like
that much has changed, honestly.
It's a very similar vibe.
I guess we, you know, none of us really see each other now
but it's pretty much all of the predictions
that were made then have gone on to be pretty true.
♪ Nah-Nah ♪
♪ I got, I got ♪
(hip hop music)