He weaves multiregional R&B into the tapestry of his rap. He delights in the indulgent poetics of slant rhyme. Louis–bred rapper twists his voice into dizzyingly distinct harmonies. You Can’t Sit With Us is Pivot Gang’s triumphant return to the energy of the their blissful younger years - just as much as it’s their glowing arrival onto rap’s mainstage.Smino isn’t afraid to get a little weird. We all respect and love each other’s music, so it’s not like I was ever worried about it not being good, it’s just like if I come up with an idea, are they gonna want to follow?” “But the second we got together it was like how it used to be when we were in the studio working on stuff. “In my head I’m like, ‘How the hell is this gonna mesh?” Joseph says.
Smino noir credits full#
While they’re “always in the studio with each other in some way,” according to Saba, this is their first full studio album ever, and the latest project as a group since 2013’s JIMMY mixtape. Overcoming loss and making room for fun didn’t resolve all the questions, though the group still had to work to figure out how they’d all fit together. They’ve since developed the John Walt Foundation, which supports young inner-city artists. In 2018, he dropped Care For Me, a critically acclaimed and more serious serious record. If Care For Me was a coping mechanism, You Can’t Sit With Us is a crisp snapshot of the friends, energies, and sounds that surrounded Walt and loved him. “I’m not very talkative, so I got to express a lot of those feelings through music.”
“I think for me, the music was the only way I was gonna get through that,” MFnMelo says. “They were there the whole way for me,” Frsh says of his return.įor the others, music was a cathartic outlet and a sometimes stringent reminder of Walt: “It’s realizing it, accepting it, and then really just for me, it was wanting to make him proud - just because of the person he was, and his work ethic,” Squeak says. Just a few months before his release, Pivot member John Walt - Saba and Joseph’s cousin - was fatally stabbed coming off of a CTA train. He was 24 years old. In 2017, Frsh returned home from a four-and-a-half year prison sentence. Raised on the Westside, the members have seen and dealt with the consequences of Chicago’s sometimes unforgiving streets. Pivot Gang’s togetherness is rooted much deeper than studio stories and famous friends. “He hopped on, and we was like, ‘Oh shit. He came by the night his highly praised 2018 album Noir dropped, and what ensued was Smino’s version of Future’s verse on “King’s Dead,” a hilariously out-of-character Playboi Carti-esque baby voice mimicking gun noises via a falsetto, like “pew-pew-pew.” Take Smino’s hook on “Bad Boys,” which is the result of a drunken studio session that “damn near turned into his album release party,” let Saba tell it. “We got a good relationship with a lot of people,” Saba says. Chicago friends like Mick Jenkins, Femdot, Kari Faux and Smino appear on the album too. You can see why other artists would want in on it. That respect and trust is recreated musically, as they breeze in and out of one another’s flows, sharing an equal number of hooks, verses, and occasionally producing credits. But they can also leave plenty of space for each other, pausing when someone starts a new thought. When one tells a ridiculous stories, the others loudly add to and revise the narrrative. There’s something to be said of pushing each other in a positive, creative way.” Dae Dae adds, “And we all have the same goal, so it’s gonna get done. “You have to hit the hard reset after a while, ’cause it’s like we’re just chilling - we need to make things,” Joseph Chilliams says of the process.
After removing video games and any other distractions from the studio, putting together 20 songs in eight days didn’t seem like such an impossible task. The in-house games and skill tests are a testament to the young men’s almost adolescent energy and playful antics, combined with an insane work ethic and unmatched talent. John Walt, Pivot Gang isn’t a group that assembled overnight.
Comprised of brothers Saba and Joseph Chilliams, a second pair of siblings Frsh Waters and squeakPIVOT, and lifelong friends MFnMelo, producer daedaePIVOT, and fallen member DinnerWithJohn, a.k.a. It helps that the members have a lifelong musical repertoire to back that 20-minute heat check. “We didn’t even show it to her we were just checking,” producer DaeDae adds, laughing.