Chicago rapper Saba and storied producer No ID will release their collaborative album, From the Private Collection of Saba and No ID, on March 18.
A full track list for the album hasn’t been released yet, but it’s set to feature recently-released singles “Head.rap,” “How to Impress God,” and “Woes of the World.” It’s unclear if two track the pair dropped in 2023, “Hue_man Nature” and “Back in Office,” made the cut.
While Saba and No ID started working on Private Collection in 2022, much of the album was overhauled after the 2023 death of Saba’s uncle, the producer Tommy Skillfinger (who helmed an early version of the Private Collection track “Big Picture”).
While this is their first collaborative project together, No ID (who’s also from Chicago) has been aware of Saba for years and even tried to sign the rapper while he was working as an executive at Capitol. While Saba declined the offer at the time, they stayed in touch and got in the studio together for the first time in 2019 — a session that was “memorable as fuck,” as Saba recently recalled to Rolling Stone.
“He made 20 beats in one sitting,” Saba said. “He just sat in the corner, made 20 beats, gave me 20 beats, and then went home.”
From the Private Collection of Saba and No ID officially began a few years later when No ID sent Saba a pack of more than 100 beats. While Saba saw the beat pack as a kind of test from No ID — “He just trusted me with 100-plus beats. He gave me a shot” — the producer also made the beat pack as a personal challenge.
As he explained to Rolling Stone, he felt like beatmakers had been disregarded while producers had become heralded as “huge, larger-than-life people who sit in chairs and tell everybody what to do.” As No ID put it: “I felt like, ‘Man, I became too much of a producer. I need to be a beatmaker again.’”
For Saba, Private Collection will be his first album since 2022’s Few Good Things. As for No ID, some of his recent credits include “American Requiem” from Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, while he also executive produced Killer Mike’s Grammy-winning album, Michael.
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