Saba may have already addressed the loss of his good friend John Walt on his excellent album, Care For Me, earlier this year, but it appears he still has some issues to get off his chest on his latest single, “Beautiful Smile,” featuring Maryland rapper IDK.
Produced by Saba himself along with additional production from Pivot crew member Dae Dae and Daoud, “Beautiful Smile” is built on a creeping, eerie beat that reflects the anxiety and paranoia Saba expresses through his melancholic and jumpy lyrics. “I got a beautiful smile, honestly I forgot how / Since I put my boy in a box, sometimes I see him in the cloud,” Saba laments. IDK expands on that twitchy outlook with his own verse, encompassing the dire social issues that weigh on him and his contemporaries: “See I come from a place where them n—-s don’t usually amount sh*t /Boarded up houses across from the suburbs / That’s causing a feud like the north and southern.”
On a brighter note, Saba may have a reason to crack a grin soon enough, as he and St. Louis rapper Smino have begun teasing a collaborative project between themselves and Noname, solidifying the highly-touted Midwestern crew as an official unit that should be releasing sometime in 2019.
