Music
A few years ago, Saba and Pivot Gang were the fastest rising stars of Chicago's hip-hop scene, but when tragedy struck, it threatened to derail their lives. This is how they stayed on track.
Right now, Chicago's hip-hop scene is fizzing with a youthful energy. A city historically indebted to jazz, that genre's offshoots have produced some of the most compelling storytellers of our time. Artists like Chance The Rapper have brought its stories to the world stage, while others, like Noname and Mick Jenkins, offer a more contemplative take on its daily goings-on. It's west side hip-hop collective Pivot Gang, though, who are perhaps the city's most vibrant torchbearers.
Formed in 2012, Pivot Gang is currently made up of brothers Saba and Joseph Chilliams, a second pair of siblings, Frsh Waters and SqueakPIVOT, plus MFnMelo, daedaePIVOT and Dam Dam. These lifelong friends have an almost adolescent buzz about them and a relentless work ethic to match, yet their lively demeanour stands in curious comparison to their music – a smooth blend of soul, rapid-fire drill beats and warm jazz sounds documenting the struggles of inner-city living. Pivot Gang gave Chicago hip-hop a new lease of life, one that was glowing, playful and cerebral all at once.
The group's commitment to independence and musical autonomy was working in their favour. They self-released their 2013 JIMMY mixtape to widespread praise, they collaborated with hometown heroes like Chance The Rapper and they were beginning to play sold out shows to doting, sweat-drenched fans. Pivot Gang were going from strength to strength, both collectively and individually.
On February 8, 2017 they were stopped in their tracks, though. After a short altercation on the city metro, an unknown man stabbed Pivot member (and Saba's cousin) John Walt. He was pronounced dead at the scene, aged just 24. The tragedy rattled Pivot Gang's foundations – as friends, as family and as artists.
"I feel like coping isn't even possible," says Chilliams. "When Walt's death first happened, everything felt raw, everything was s***. How do you deal with something like that? There's no manual for grief.
"I have a problem with grief, because this is the thing, right?" Chilliams adjusts his tone. "The only real expression of grief I've seen has been in movies. I had no idea how people do it in real life; my entire concept of it is skewed. When Walt passed, I was thinking, 'Man, I'm gonna just go to the studio and make a million songs, because I care about him and that's what he wants'. But no, it took months before I was able to do anything like that. I had to shut down, really just feel what happened. I feel lied to by Hollywood. Grieving is nothing like how it is in the movies – it's bullshit and I demand an accurate representation of it.”"
I feel lied to by Hollywood. Grieving is nothing like how it is in the movies
Grief remains one of the most complex and unnavigable human emotions we can experience. It manifests in new ways with each passing day. Absence takes on an aqueous form, shifting into strange new shapes and seeping into everything it touches.
"It's really hard to accept. Even now, a couple of years later, you still don't know how to accept that this person is gone. Everyone went through it in different ways. I felt that, from talking to everyone individually, everyone felt guilty about something different," says daedaePIVOT.
Saba (real name: Tahj Malik Chandler) is quick to agree: "When it comes to grieving, everybody's on a different time frame. It's not like, 'Oh, he's doing better, so we're all doing better now'. You might feel great some days and then some days you feel terrible."
In an attempt to harness their grief, they decided to jump straight back into music, together. Just days after Walt's passing, Saba, Chilliams, MFnMelo, SqueakPIVOT, Dam Dam and daedaePIVOT were all on tour. "It was very crazy going on tour right after that, but we all just want to make music. We all got to go on the road and just perform as a group for the first time. It was the happiest and the saddest time. The highs and lows were crazy," admits Chilliams.
Prior to Walt's death, Saba also endured what he calls "spiritual burnout". Despite sounding like such a pointed phrase, Saba isn't entirely sure how to describe what he means by it – to him, a long period of his life felt like one continuous blur. When Pivot Gang first started, Saba was attending local arts school Columbia College on a scholarship. He'd always been a keen student, graduating high school at 16 and maintaining a near-perfect grade point average throughout. Eventually, balancing his studies with making music proved difficult.
"Those were some of the hardest days of my life. My schedule was crazy. I would go downtown for class for a few hours, then I would come home and get up with the guys in the studio. We would work and then I would have to go back to class at night," exhales Saba. "I had so much going on and instead of feeling like I was doing a lot, it started becoming counterproductive. I did increasingly worse in school, worse in the studio, having less attention to give to everything."
Family and friends grew concerned. "There was one time specifically that Saba came to an open mic after going to school and doing a session at our house. He looked like he was about to collapse. He was doing way too much and you could start to see the physical strain on him," explains Chilliams. The rest of Pivot Gang nod in agreement.
As everything came to a head, Saba decided to drop out of college and pursue music full time. "Time is one of the most important things in the universe, so it's hard to give time to so many different things, instead of just giving it to what you're dedicated to. So that's what I decided to do," he declares with a marked boldness in his voice.
What followed was some of the crew's most accomplished work to date, most notably on Saba's 2018 full-length CARE FOR ME. Equal parts hard-to-swallow and meditative, his second solo album charts personal sorrow, challenging relationships and dwindling mental health with the kind of poignant candour only possessed by those who have been touched by tragedy. It's easy to regard CARE FOR ME as his grief album – and that is, for the most part, true. But it's also a sprawling letter of gratitude to his late cousin, who he writes about as if he's a superhero, a confidant with supernatural charm.
This fondness is best depicted on album standout PROM / KING. Over seven minutes, Saba looks back at his and Walt's relationship, from their childhood squabbles to brotherly support at senior prom, their first open mic performance to the call from his aunt explaining that Walt was missing the day he died. It's a narrative triumph and one that burns with candid fire. It's impossible to imagine that Saba didn't record the song in just one take.
"CARE FOR ME was me vocalising what I was going through and I don't know that it really healed anything," says Saba. "It didn't bring Walt back, or fill a hole, but I did get some weight off my chest. The music helps, but it doesn't fix anything."
It didn't bring Walt back, or fill a hole, but I did get some weight off my chest
Almost on cue, a friend of Pivot Gang drives past and everyone interrupts the conversation to shout an enthusiastic greeting – "Yo man! What's good?" – and it becomes apparent that even in the middle of a talk about grief, their jovial spirit still finds a way to keep them light. Ultimately, though, their music is what collectively brought them back from the brink.
"Music ended up bringing us all together in the end," reflects daedaePIVOT. "Once you kinda push through the first big step of getting to a place where you can do anything at all, you feel like you're actually doing for yourself, or also for him. It's like everyone came together and started pushing each other and working together in a different way than we were before."
It's an outlook that yielded this year's You Can't Sit With Us – Pivot Gang's first album proper under their collective name. On its cover, the crew are dressed in black suits and stand around an oil portrait of Walt. Rather than morbidly elegiac, the project, with guest slots from like-minded locals Mick Jenkins, Smino, Jean Deux and Femdot, is like a warm embrace from a friend. With its water-tight production, wonky synths and almost languid vocal delivery, it shows a collective that is healing and, most of all, motivated.
Pivot Gang have adjusted to their new reality and their gratitude for one another has swelled. Saba describes his bandmates as inspiring. He anoints Frsh Waters as Pivot Gang's social butterfly, the person who taught them all to come out of their shell and start engaging with people to spread the word about their music. daedaePIVOT is the quiet genius on the controls, "seeing music in ways other people don't". Chilliams craves to connect – the people, he claims, "care that I'm alive". SqueakPIVOT, MFn Melo and Dam Dam play a role in "being about it", always there to offer a helping hand.
After going through so much, Pivot Gang are irrevocably committed to their music – and each other. Somehow, that feels like their biggest achievement yet.
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