Care for Me, Walt

“You never know what you have until it’s gone.” A common colloquial phrase applicable to nearly every event, this quote speaks to me specifically when contemplating loss. Loss is widely considered to be one of the worst feelings that a human being can feel. It appears in many ways: losing a competition, losing a loved one, or sometimes even losing yourself in the hustle and bustle of life. To process this grief, this inner turmoil of losing something you hold dear to your heart is perhaps the most painful process of all. You may value something when it’s there, but you will never know how truly precious it was until it’s gone.

When originally tasked with writing about self-actualization, I struggled to find topics to write about. I looked at everything for inspiration, from my dog to the War and Peace novel on my bedstand, but nothing stood out. Frustrated by my lack of ideas, I proceeded to, as I usually do when I face any minor difficulty, shuffle through my liked songs on Spotify. As soon as the first beat of BUSY / SIRENS played, I knew I had found my piece.

Released in 2018, CARE FOR ME by Chicago rapper Saba details feelings of seclusion and isolation and struggling to grapple with his cathartic and emotionless personality after the shooting of his best friend and cousin, John Walt. One of my top 3 albums of all time, I’ve listened to CARE FOR ME over 50 times at least, and what stands out to me every time is Saba’s reflective and diaristic storytelling. Not originally intended to be a tribute album, Saba writes about his feelings in a way not often reflected in a genre as closed as rap. Often portrayed as gangsters and thugs, rappers have an underlying expectation to fit the stereotype. In contrast, the first song on CARE FOR ME begins with Saba singing the words “I’m so alone.” A pleasant distinction from the basic club hits and foolish messaging of modern hip-hop, Saba’s grievous yet empathetic tone accentuates perfectly with the gloomy mood of the record as he reveals his deepest fears after the loss of his best friend.

Saba’s epiphany in CARE FOR ME appears after the change in his thoughts after Walt passes on. Progressing through the album, Saba becomes more careful, more reclusive, more restricted. His vulnerability is put on show as he covers his internal dialogue with moody, transient beats that cause one to think about their own feelings of loss or despair. The climax of the record appears in the song PROM / KING, where Saba displays his entire relationship with Walt up to the point where he is shot. Acknowledging an extremely depressing ending, Saba makes a conscious stylistic choice to conclude the album with the song HEAVEN ALL AROUND ME, a positive and almost immortal conclusion to the times he spent with Walt. The epiphany is discovered at this point, the end of the musical journey of CARE FOR ME, where Saba provides a conclusion to Walt singing at the end of the last song, in a heavenly tone. Walt is reborn in heaven, and it is an extremely powerful epiphany to see the progression of how Saba “is so alone” at the beginning of the work, to where he realizes at the end of the saga that, despite everything, he was never alone and he never will be because of the connections he had with those he loved.