ExpIRES | May 1
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Care For Me by Saba is a poetic rap album that touches on the complexities of grief, isolation, and the search for healing after losing someone you love. The first time I heard it, I was 14, in the passenger seat of my brother Truett’s car (the car I still drive today). We were heading south on I-75 when he queued up the final track, “Heaven All Around Me.” At the time, I felt the weight behind Saba’s voice but did not yet understand it.
A few months later, Truett passed away. And that song and the whole album took on a different shape.
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In the years following, I fell into music like it was oxygen. Truett lived and breathed it, which became my way of staying close to him. I found an old playlist he made for me, buried deep in my phone, and there it was: Care For Me. I listened all the way through. I recognized the artistry, pain, and weight of the words, but only recently have I seen the full image Saba was painting.
The album begins with “Busy / Sirens.” Right out the gate, Saba sings, “I’m so alone.”
It’s not just a lyric; it’s a cry. He wants you to hear him, to carry the weight with him. You don’t yet know what he’s grieving, but you feel the heaviness in every syllable. As the album unfolds, you begin to feel the absence in his life; something’s missing. Someone’s missing.
And then you get to “Prom / King.” That’s where Saba presses play on the home movie of his life.
He introduces us to Walter, his older cousin, a jokester, “the type who picked on you at every family visit.” Eventually, they bond over prom. Walt needs money for a suit, and Saba needs a date. What starts as a simple exchange grows into something meaningful. The two of them become inseparable. They built something together in the Chicago rap scene.
Then, the gut punch. Walt is stabbed on a train. And just like that, the puzzle pieces click into place. You realize Care For Me isn’t just a project. It’s a grieving process in real-time. It’s a memorial. It’s Saba trying to make sense of the senseless.
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That’s when I understood it. That’s when it became my album, too.
When Truett died, I didn’t just lose a brother. I lost a role model. A friend. A guide. Someone who handed me art and showed me how to feel it. Now, when I listen to Care For Me, I’m not just listening to Saba mourn Walt. I’m mourning Truett. I’m in the passenger seat again, driving down I-75, feeling the bass of “Heaven All Around Me” shake the doors. I’m reminded that even in loss, there’s a strange kind of comfort in knowing someone else has felt what you’re feeling and turned it into something beautiful.
Prom/King
By Saba
Truett Mckeehan
