Growing up in Chicago, Saba had, as many Midwestern kids did, a fascination with the melodic double-time flow of the five-piece Cleveland rap band Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Their relative proximity and mid-90s radio dominance would have contributed to that, but also, Saba just seems like exactly the kind of rapper to have rooted out every single example of the genre to absorb and learn from — you can occasionally hear the influence in his flows on projects like Care For Me and Pivot Gang’s You Can’t Sit With Us.
Now, with the release of his third album, Few Good Things, just over the horizon (it drops on February 4 on Saba’s own Pivot Gang imprint), the Windy City MC gets to link up with one of his musical heroes on his latest single from the album. “Come My Way,” produced (as usual) by Daoud and daedaePIVOT, features none other than Bone Thugs member Krayzie Bone, who once won a Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance with another disciple, Chamillionaire, and recently participated in his band’s Verzuz with Three Six Mafia.
In the press release for the single, Saba said, “When I think back on first discovering Bone Thugs-N-Harmony as a child, it immediately stood out to me as unique. I started paying attention and really learning how to rap from listening to them and trying to recite it. It felt honest and completely true to themselves — authentic in a way that doesn’t come around very often and in a way that will be impossible to recreate. Their mix of melody and rhythms that I had never heard is what connected with me in a way that other music just didn’t. It inspired me to be more creative.”
Meanwhile, the inspiration for the song itself is “nostalgia and growing up, and I think ‘hopeful’ and ‘soulful’ are accurate descriptions of the song… I’m describing many things that are normal on the westside of Chicago so that it plays like just any other day — pretty stagnant but having so much life. ‘We ain’t got no time to relax’ is a harsh reality for so many people experiencing this type of poverty where the focus is on work and survival.”
Listen to Saba’s new single “Come My Way” featuring Krayzie Bone above and check out the dates for his Back Home Tour here.
Few Good Things is due 2/4 via Pivot Gang, LLC. Pre-save here.