For years, Saba has carried himself like someone with something to prove. Every project since his 2016 breakout Bucket List Project has felt like a statement of survival — an artist trying to outthink his own pain. CARE FOR ME turned grief into melody, its hushed percussion and heavy-hearted verses memorializing his late cousin in real time. Few Good Things and From the Private Collection of Saba and No I.D. expanded the canvas, tracing the weight of legacy and the labor of joy. Even when the beats floated, the writing never did; every bar landed with deliberation.
C0FFEE!, his new EP, sounds like the first deep breath he’s taken in years. The title itself — jittery punctuation and all — feels like a nervous exhale. It’s not an epiphany or a reset so much as a stretch, the sound of someone remembering that motion can be its own meaning. The concept is low-stakes and almost silly: nine songs written and recorded inside his black Ford Bronco Wildtrak, as if Saba built a mobile studio just to see what happens when he stops trying to make a masterpiece. But in loosening his grip, he finds a new kind of focus — ideas spilling freely, beats bleeding into one another, a sense of spontaneity that his meticulously crafted albums never allowed.
The production palette feels like a shuffled playlist of Saba’s influences — from Dilla’s dusty percussion to the plush synth textures of Private Collection — but with fingerprints still smudged on the glass. On opener “How Many X?,” shuffling drums and slippery guitar licks circle each other like thoughts mid-loop. He raps through exhaustion, half-mantra, half-flex: “How many times I kept it pushin’, even with a broken arm?” The song’s imperfections are part of its pulse — every uneven note proof that Saba’s control is finally loosening.
Moments later, “don’t be long” lowers the temperature. Saba switches to a spoken cadence, cataloging daily life like voicemail poetry — texts from management, his partner’s calls home, a cousin just released from prison. It’s diaristic but not indulgent, the sound of someone thinking aloud while the car idles. The sudden shift into “my bro” feels like the caffeine finally kicking in — rubbery basslines, stuttering hi-hats, and an energy that flips between melancholy and momentum. Across the EP, his trusted circle of producers — Mejiwahn, FELIX!, cam.yh, Ben Nartey — keep the beats limber and conversational, as if they’re trading Ableton files in real time. On the two standout cuts, “itachi” and “don’t be long,” that looseness crystallizes into something complete: part jam session, part therapy.
Still, the freedom comes with its own mess. For every spark of improvisational brilliance, there’s a half-sketched idea that never quite lands. The dreamy “supplier interlude” feels like a gorgeous loop caught mid-sentence. “LOOKING FOR PARKING,” buried mid-tracklist, sounds like an unfinished sketch left in the folder by accident. But then there’s “Today Years Old,” a full-circle moment that could’ve lived on CARE FOR ME — all tactile drums and wounded reflection — reminding you how effortlessly Saba can still strike emotional gold when he feels like finishing the thought.
C0FFEE! isn’t a landmark release, and it doesn’t need to be. It’s a mood board, a pit stop, a car window cracked open during a long drive. But that’s what makes it revealing. After years of immaculate structure and existential heaviness, Saba is finally allowing himself to wander — to make music without tidying up every idea. In doing so, he exposes the pulse that’s always animated his best work: the hunger to stay human amid perfection’s pull. The EP ends not in catharsis but continuation, an open road where the thoughts never quite resolve. Maybe that’s the point. Sometimes, freedom sounds like not knowing what song comes next.
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