Tosten Burks doesn’t want a glow stick.
Not even the youth can shake the deja vu. Castles are still turning into debris. Cops are still shooting protesters. Feel like you’ve been here before? So does Tahj Malik Chandler, the 21-year-old poet laureate of Chicago’s western border. On “Temporary,” Saba’s first song since ComfortZone, he enlists Timbo’s Calumet City protégé Tink, barely 20 herself, for a dual assault on taking shit for granted. Fear and new friends are fleeting. So is the cemetery.
The zero-gravity reverberating snare, chopped neo-soul acoustic guitar, and moonlit synths come from Pivot Gang production duo Chad. Saba’s snarling, melodic double-time comes from the angry Bizzy Bone sermons still echoing off the Great Lakes. Daggers like, “I’ll probably die and reappear poor but more important,” come from a kid who’s heard too many moving eulogies. An anonymous prayer for bravery on the Blue Line.
Saba’s been deconstructing the space-time continuum for years. He graduated from prep school at 16, the same age at which he named a mixtape after a 200-year-old poem about how history fades. He opened last year’s project stuck in an hourglass, cyclical violence and Adderall leaving the days looking the same. On Acid Rap, he called Father Time a deadbeat. Clocks, calendars don’t matter when this life is barely even yours. Celebrate every day, especially September 6th, when the boy wonder is rocking a little party we’re throwing at The Echo.
https://soundcloud.com/donnietrumpet/smthnthtiwnt
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