Saba and No ID Threw Everything Into the Pot on Their New Album
No ID’s beats were integral to the music Saba heard growing up on the West Side of Chicago, on early Common albums, ’00s Jay-Z hits, and boundary-pushing Kanye West tracks. “I was listening to them without knowing who was behind what,” Saba says. Even now, he’s still discovering the depths of the Chicago producer’s discography. “Sometimes I’ll be on Instagram and see some of his credits that I didn’t know he produced. I’ll just text him like, ‘Damn, you did this one?’”
Now, with their new joint album From the Private Collection of Saba and No ID, Saba gets to join that legendary list. Their collaboration wasn’t supposed to get so big; it began with No ID giving Saba some beats to record over during a tour. But the 30-year-old rapper and 53-year-old producer soon realized they sharpened each other. No ID taught Saba production skills; Saba would turn the beats No ID was unsure of into full songs. They even learned with one another outside the studio, taking a photography class together.
Private Collection is surprisingly bright for a Saba album, trading the trauma of 2018’s Care for Me and introspection of Few Good Things for songs about community, dating, and dreadlocks. And that extends to the sound, thanks to No ID’s lush, soulful beats. Saba still takes time to reflect, like on the singles “How to Impress God” and “Woes of the World,” but he’s at his best on a song like “Westside Bound Pt. 4,” where he’s celebrating his family’s musical history over an anthemic horn loop. “I look at this almost like a breakfast sampler,” Saba says. “It’s a little bit of everything.”
Your history together goes back a while. How did you become aware of each other?
No ID: I heard him rapping and people would be like, “He’s from Chicago.” But I didn’t realize I knew his father. We had made music back in the ’90s together. The first real contact with Saba was when I was a label executive. I wasn’t even thinking about working on a project, because he produces too. I was like, I wanna sign him. But I was also like, He’ll never want a record deal. He’s gonna be indie forever.
And that was what happened, right?
No ID: Yeah, he didn’t take a deal. And then once I wasn’t an executive, I was like, Well, why don’t we just make music like normal people?
So when does the idea of a collaboration turn into an album or a mixtape?
Saba: 2022, I’m on the Back Home tour. Right before I leave, he just sent his producer bag. It felt like a billion beats. I never had a bus before on a tour, so this was my first time feeling confident where I’m like, we can have a studio set up and I can keep recording. I came back with 14 songs, and that’s where we initially started. I think we released two of them as loosies.
When those songs, “Back in Office” and “hue_man nature,” were coming out, some people thought that was the start of the album. But those aren’t actually on this track list.
Saba: The plan changed. I wanted to put out a “Saba’s a rapper” album. People know I can do concept, people know I can be vulnerable, I can give story, I can create art. Then I’m like, Man, I rap! I wanna rap. And just releasing “Back in Office” alone kind of handled that.
Also, I felt like I could challenge myself more to make better records. I didn’t wanna misuse the opportunity. I didn’t wanna go into it prematurely without fully developing my actual ideas.
What would be the start-to-finish process of working on a song together?
No ID: There was absolutely no tradition … [Laughs.] There’s been, “Hey, let me show you how to use this machine.” There was, “I’m playing something on my TP-7,” and him being like, “What is that?” Sometimes artists need a complete beat to feel confident enough to make the song, whereas me as a creator, I always wanna make the song better by completing the music. I’d be like, “I ain’t gon’ play you that.” And he’d like, “Play it, man!” And then he’ll make a song that make me go, “Oh, my bad.”
It sounds like Saba, you would hear something in No ID’s beats that he didn’t quite hear was there, or the reverse.
Saba: Sometimes the beat is like betting, you know what I’m saying? The complete picture is like, you gotta imagine a vocal over it or something and then you hear it differently. The bounce might feel different after you hear how they flow on it.
No ID: Hip-hop instituted that the beatmaker makes a beat, rapper makes a rap. Us both being producers, it’s way bigger — it’s conversations, it’s inspiration, it’s pockets that you find, moments that you have to capture when it happens and not let it slide past. So it started as a traditional, “Here’s some beats, write some raps,” and it grew into, “What do we wanna say? What do we wanna accomplish?”
For you, Saba, this feels like a brighter collection of work. Did that come out of working with No ID, or was that something separate going on?
Saba: It’s both things. Certain people bring out certain things. Sometimes it’s the conversation, sometimes the actual music is different. But before we started this, I was touring an album like Care for Me, and it’s tough to tour. I love playing those songs — people respond to them. But I’m onstage and it’s like, it shouldn’t always feel this heavy.
Was that something that you started talking about when you got in the studio?
Saba: We had so many talks about identity, about how I see myself as an artist, about all of these different facets of this conversation while not being this exact conversation. Some of those conversations literally turned into songs, some of them turned into intent for how we market. Some of them turned into just, “That was a great conversation.” You never really know what’s gonna happen in those couple hours before you begin working, where you just feeding off each other’s energy.
Sometimes a producer or a co-writer is like a therapist.
No ID: It’s therapy for me too, sometimes. If the intention is there and it’s pure and it’s human, I believe divine inspiration comes in for everybody, and it don’t matter who’s talking. It’s not like the producer is the therapist. It’s like therapy is in session and it’s an exchange of energy that turns into music.
“head.rap” is a really fun song, but you don’t hear people rapping about hair often. Where did that idea come from?
Saba: Man, in the studio, literally I looked around — I had one of my homegirls, a couple of the homies, the engineer — and everybody had locs. So we started talking about our hair, and “What made you grow your shit out?” It might be a two-hour conversation, and then it’s like, “All right, press play on that.” And now I can’t help but write this song because we’ve just spent the last couple hours talking about this, which is how a lot of these songs come into fruition. You capture the energy of the room.
You’re both Chicago natives, which means the city has a huge presence on the album. But you made this album in L.A., where you both live now. What does it mean for you to still be Chicago hip-hop artists, but to be doing that from somewhere else?
No ID: I love that Chicago birthed me and it’s always where my heart is, but there’s a whole planet to explore. I remember one time I was talking to André 3000 and he asked me about a specific album I worked on in Hawaii. He said, “I’m thinking about going up in the Colorado mountains where it’s cold. I wanna see what comes out of me in a cold environment.” And I thought that was interesting, because it is about us getting everything we can get out of us as a human being. That’s how we represent where we from the best.
Saba: I think I’m still loading this answer. It’s happening in real time, where I go home and I’m able to see the effect that me not being in Chicago impacts Chicago. For me, it’s like, Man, I’m out here and I just did a fucking album with No ID. I want Chicago to feel this. And I obviously don’t have control over that, but at the same time, I know what I put in. It’s like, knowing that you cooked with good ingredients, the meal is going to be better.
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