With all the tragedies and the triumphs that have occurred over the past decade for Chicago rapper Saba, he holds firm to the belief that “time is the greatest storyteller.”
The gifted wordsmith, born Tahj Chandler, shared this pearl of wisdom during a conversation about his late cousin, Walter Long, Jr. a.k.a. John Walt, who was killed in 2017 after being stabbed outside a CTA stop in River West at age 24. Walt and Saba were both members of the hip-hop collective Pivot Gang, and that same year, the group organized a benefit concert named after Walt; it returns to Metro on Friday for the first time in three years.
“This year is really a return in a sense. It’s always such a great homecoming event and a return to the love in that room at Metro,” said Saba, who now splits his time between Chicago and L.A. “When I go home and I’m talking to the people who are actually affected by the music and want to be in this space,” he added, “you can tell how much it means to them.”
At Friday’s event, Saba will headline along with Pivot Gang, with plenty of material in tow.
In the years since his cousin’s death, Saba has powerfully exorcised his grief through music, starting with his groundbreaking sophomore album in 2018, “Care For Me.” This year, he released two projects: the critically acclaimed joint album, “From the Private Collection of Saba and No I.D.” in March, that paired the rapper with “the godfather of Chicago hip-hop” and features special guests including Kelly Rowland, Raphael Saadiq, Smino and BJ the Chicago Kid.
Just a few weeks ago, Saba also released the surprise nine-track album “Coffee!” that he fully recorded from his Ford Bronco during a recent creative burst.
John Walt Day is always scheduled around Walt’s Nov. 25 birthday and Thanksgiving when messages of community and family take center stage. The intent is to celebrate a life lost too early to senseless violence, but it also serves another purpose. All of the money raised at the concert goes back to the John Walt Foundation, co-founded by the hip-hop artist and Nachelle Pugh, who is Walt’s mother, to empower youth creativity in Chicago.
“Everything that he did was to encourage other people to be great at whatever it is that they were doing. He was a big cheerleader,” said Pugh, who also acts as JWF’S executive director. In that spirit, each year the foundation provides $1,000 scholarships to a handful of budding talents in Chicago, aged 14-24, who are interested in the arts. The group also handpicks mentors for each of them.
The 2025-26 recipients include a range of teen creatives — among them, up-and-coming songwriter/producer Akeem Griffin, fashion designer Kayla Perkins, poet/musician Sol Ruby and dancer/choreographer Victory Marie. “My favorite part about art is people’s unique perspective,” said Saba, reflecting on the new group of mentees. “That’s the thing that, more than anything, we look to embody and really embrace and build in the people that we work with.”
In addition to the scholarships, the John Walt Foundation sponsors T.I.P. Fest (Teens in the Park) each summer in conjunction with the Chicago Park District to provide a platform for young creatives to showcase their talent. The group also partners with Lollapalooza through a program dubbed Lolla University, where young people interested in music can learn the ins and outs of a festival.
The inspiration for the foundation is a pair of scholarships that Saba and his cousin received as young adults while enrolled respectively at St. Joseph’s in Westchester and the former Gordon Tech High School. The cousins were each Link Unlimited Scholars, an organization that provides underrepresented students with scholarships to excel in academics.
“I wanted to make sure that young people have the same kind of resources and barriers removed,” Pugh said, “so they can be able to pursue careers and not have as much blocking them from being able to succeed.”
There’s a larger sense of community that the John Walt Foundation fosters, too, organizing additional initiatives throughout the year in the organization’s backyard in Austin. That includes the Feed the West Side program that attempts to fill the gaps left by food deserts. It kicked off during the COVID-19 pandemic when people were anxious or unable to leave their homes and after the death of George Floyd led to riots and looting of neighborhood stores, depleting an already limited supply of necessities. “There were a lot of moms that didn’t have milk to feed their babies and diapers and food because our grocery stores and pharmacies were ravaged. It was really hard for people to be able to get the things that they needed,” said Pugh.
Walt’s mother, Nachelle Pugh, is the foundation’s executive director. “I wanted to make sure that young people have the same kind of resources and barriers removed,” Pugh said, “so they can be able to pursue careers and not have as much blocking them from being able to succeed.”
Courtesy of Pamela L King Photography
From the beginning, she worked closely with the members of Pivot Gang in the volunteer-run food drive and soon found additional sponsors including Top Box Foods to keep it running. This month, Feed the West Side delivered 25 Thanksgiving meal boxes to families in need at a critical time that SNAP benefits have been limited.
“I asked about how we can make this food distribution be a little bit stronger this year,” Pugh said, noting that interest in the program has been at an all-time high. “[Top Box Foods] gave us 18 meals total in the packages that they’re delivering, so those families have enough food for a week.” Pugh also often works with Hope Community Church’s food pantry, open on Fridays, to ensure people have the nourishment they need.
Saba has taken up similar causes for the community. Earlier this month, he hosted a “Coffee!” pop-up at Spill the Beans Café where attendees were encouraged to bring coats to donate. “I think the most important thing to me is to keep paying it forward … and still be involved,” he shared.
Of course, that also includes shepherding a new flock of talent. “One of my favorite ways that I see our impact is to be in shared spaces with some of the people who were once apprentices and are now alumni.”
Saba would be the first to say he has benefitted from this sense of mentorship. His collaborator No I.D., who has also fostered the careers of Kanye West and Common, encouraged Saba to bring in his earliest influence, his uncle Tommy Skillfinger. “Growing up, [Skillfinger] was my favorite producer in the world. Every time we’d go to his house, he’d be in his living room just making a bunch of beats … and everything that I did he made it feel like it was the biggest thing,” Saba recalled.
Skillfinger had stepped away from music for a while, but returned to the craft in recent years, getting in one last song with Saba and No I.D. before sadly passing away in 2023. “I know from his friends how important it was for him to be on this project and to have a co-production credit with No I.D.,” Saba added. “His whole career and him doing music has had such an impact on me. I just wanted it to be a moment on the album.”
The song became the soulful track appropriately called “Big Picture,” with the symbolism taking on greater meaning over time. It inspired a photography project that dovetailed with the album release and Saba named his 2025 tour after the song.
Reflecting on the bigger picture has also been a big part of bringing back John Walt Day and remembering his cousin’s legacy.
“So much of the grief around someone being not physically here is set on that physical part. But I think Walt is just such a big energy that a lot of the things that made him him, we do kind of still get to experience,” Saba reflected. “We can still laugh at the jokes, we can still listen to the music, we can still kind of share that memory of him in a way that it brought me and a lot of my friends closer together.
“It’s about accepting the cards and making the most out of it,” he continued, “which is something that, if he was still here, I think he would agree.”