Saba and No ID are two legends of Chicago hip-hop, from two different generations. Saba is the cerebral rap poet who made his name with corrosively pained classics like 2018’s Care for Me and 2022’s Few Good Things. No ID, the “Godfather of Chicago Hip-Hop,” has spent his life making the beats that Saba grew up on. But they join forces to reach the higher ground on their long-awaited collaboration album, From the Private Collection of Saba and No ID. It’s rare to hear an indie rapper who just turned 30 team up with a big-name 53-year-old production legend for an artistic adventure like this.
Private Collection is a labor of love for both artists — relaxed in the grooves, spiritual in the rhymes. It’s a an experimental masterpiece where old school meets next school, with both artists rising to the challenge. Even if Saba likes to call his wise elder “Confucius,” No ID definitely isn’t playing Coach Mickey to anyone’s Rocky here — they’re both pushing far beyond their comfort zones, neither resting on his legend. They’re two machetes sharpening each other up creatively, tapping into Chicago’s soul heritage from No ID’s South Side to Saba’s West.
Early on, Saba proclaims himself “the fly ghetto-empath anxious poet,” but he sounds more relaxed than ever riding these beats. Over the past decade, he’s been one of the toughest storytellers anywhere in music, turning trauma and loss into his art. Saba is always the voice taking the biggest risks, asking himself the hardest questions, digging deep into the most turbulent emotions with his own stark honesty. He stands tall in the cerebral Chicago rap scene, like his Ghetto Sage comrades Smino and NoName. He’s introspective as usual here, yet shows off a lighter touch, especially when he’s rapping about his day-to-day spiritual practice, which means everything from yoga (“Pep in my step and shit!”) to hair care.
No ID has been producing Chicago hip-hop for three decades, going back to Common’s 1994 backpack breakthrough “I Used to Love H.E.R.” He also mentored the young Kanye West in deep-soul production. He’s remained a force right up to modern gems like Jay-Z’s 4:44, Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, and Vince Staples’ Summertime ’06. But he’s never been one to stay still. The duo have been teasing Private Collection for almost two years now, dropping songs that didn’t make the album, as they kept experimenting and tinkering.
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Private Collection ranges from pensive singles — “Woes of the World,” “How to Impress God,” “head.rap” — to the buoyant history of Chicago R&B in “Westside Bound Pt. 4.” Smino guests on the finale “A Few Songs,” and Ibeyi in “Reciprocity,” while the odd-but-right combo of Kelly Rowland and Raphel Saadiq join for “Crash.” Other voices here include Jordan Ward, Frsh Waters, Obi, Madison McFerrin, and more. “Every Painting Has a Price” begins on a warm dusty-soul note, with BJ the Chicago Kid and Eryn Allen Kane, over a laid-back Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell groove: “You’re All I Need to Get By,” Sixties Motown by way of Nineties Wu-Tang.
“I’m an introvert but I’m popular,” Saba declares early on the album, an apt line for an introspective artist who still keeps an eye on the wider world. “Breakdown” gets into his religious pursuits, as Saba declares, “I make a winery out of hydrants on the street/Like Christ I wash my enemies’ feet/Let ‘em step wrong and they amputees.” But there’s also sex and drugs in the air, as he recalls, “She let me explore like Sacajawea while she was off a sack of weed / Still treated her like majesty.”
Saba has always approached his rap confessions like a true believer who hears hip-hop as the key to his own innermost secrets. One of his most indelible songs is “2012” from Few Good Things, where he learns who he is through a troubled teenage friendship, with two lonely kids bonding over their favorite rap tapes to hide out from the gunfire outside. (“Music’s our common interest, we rambling about Kendrick and Kid Cudi.”) Music is the only place they can feel safe enough to dream out loud. It’s one of the best songs about music anyone has come up with lately.
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But there’s a similar elegiac touch all over this album; he and No ID hit reset on the whole project when Saba lost his uncle, producer Tommy Skillfinger, his original rap mentor. “He’s the person who made me fall in love with hip-hop,” Saba said. “It made me want to re-approach things; I had to have a lot of conversations with myself that I hadn’t had to have in a long time.”
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On Private Collection, his grief inspires him to ponder his spiritual conflicts as well as the death he sees all around him. (“Grief is such a wild concept,” he told Rolling Stone in 2022. “It feels like talking about aliens or something.”) He feels dislocated making a new life in L.A., as he keeps seeing his old friends get killed back home in Chicago. “Wake and think on what you grateful for,” Saba says toward the end. “Well, today I woke up, and I ain’t in a coma.”
Yet he soars in “Westside Bound Pt. 4,” the latest chapter in his long-running album-by-album love letter to his hometown. “Since nobody else wanna do it,” he chants with MFnMelo, “I guess I gotta put my city on the map / It’s bigger than rap.” But for both artists, Private Collection is a tribute to hip-hop tradition as well as to Chicago, as heartfelt and personal as the title suggests. It’s like Saba says: when you hear the sound, it’s about to go down.
