A few years after Atlanta oddball SahBabii broke out with his 2017 hit “Pull Up wit ah Stick”, he kept the momentum going with witty, absurd bars and a penchant for saying things like, “Gave her both of these balls like LaMelo and Lonzo.” But after the passing of a close friend, DemonChild, SahBabii dropped his shenanigans to create the 2021 LP Do It for Demon, a heartfelt memorial addressing grief and anguish. Though his rapping was still loose and nonchalant, he redirected his observations inward. On his new album, Saaheem, titled after his birth name, he balances mischief with vulnerable introspection, embracing minty-fresh vocal styles and sharpened production choices that highlight his songwriting.

SahBabii is focused on telling all on Saaheem, even when it’s difficult—or ridiculous. In the first verse of “Belt Boyz,” Sah sounds more paranoid than ever, recalling witnessing DemonChild and his brother T3 do drive-bys. In both content and autobiographical style, it’s a clear extension of Do It for Demon. “Save iT 4 Me Babii” tells a story of Sah taking an airplane to lay it down on a lover; you can almost envision the cartoon bubble above the window seat revealing his freaky daydreams: “It’s about two hours on this flight/Did you take a shower, get right?” It’s a perverted flashback that would be at home on Barnacles, but with a more studied approach. Throughout Saaheem, humor punctuates and softens weightier issues. On the piano-led “Everyday,” SahBabii’s tone swaps between serious and unserious as he runs through his day: “I hit a lick in the morning/Then I bought a sausage biscuit.” He finds beauty and humor in the real-time struggle, with an inclination for fun that makes even the gnarly moments come off endearing.

When SahBabii takes stabs at styles he hasn’t explored much, it generally pays off. On “Viking,” he raps with a new intensity, a nasally inflection halfway between Barter-era Young Thug and I Am Music-era Playboi Carti. It aligns his sound more distinctly with the Atlanta canon and speaks to a love and understanding of the city he comes from. The Auto-Tuned melodies on “1095 Osborne St” are covered in clouds of silk, as if Luther Vandross was off prescription pills. It’s sexy, desperate, and hilarious, perfectly capturing his years-long obsession with making sex as silly as possible.

Perhaps it’s the stylish production that brings out the best in Sah. Usually burdened by poor vocal mixing techniques, he sounds like a true professional on Saaheem, his vocal chains crisper than before. The beat selection abandons his usual run-of-the-mill atmospheric cuts for grittier selections that bring the drums to the forefront. “Sylvan Rd Ridin Down Dill,” one of the best beats on the album, features hallucinogenic synths, sticky 808s, and an absolutely disgusting snare sound. The sporadic 808 pattern on “Anaconda Living” sounds like rolling thunder through the hi-hats. “Don Quan Intro” lands with the introspective weight of a Nothing Was the Same B-side: SahBabii bars up over the floaty instrumental, emphasizing the placement of the punchlines the same way Drake would. Other than a few tracks like “Roll Wit Me” and “Kodak” that are comparable to his usual fluff, Sah’s working with a new palette, and all the moving parts keep him focused.

Saaheem could have ended by falling back on his tried-and-true brand of horniness. Instead, on “Workin,” he circles around more universal rap lifestyle content—robbing, trapping, struggling to put food on the table—and meditates on a more down-to-earth mantra: “I’m a regular person.” When SahBabii is this exposed, the deviancy that used to define his music starts to seem almost out of character; the more eccentric parts of his catalog suddenly feel less spontaneous, as though he’d had to dig for those ideas all along. Maybe the banter was just his way of delaying airing the dirty laundry. Even the class clown has shit going on at home.