As soon as he heard Notorious B.I.G. and Bone Thugs-n-Harmony's "Notorious Thugs" when he was 8 years old, Saba knew he was going to be a rapper. Now 22, the West Side-based artist born Tahj Chandler is gearing up to release what is one of the city's most anticipated mixtapes of the year, "Bucket List," sometime in early fall. As we meet at the Pilsen-based studio Magnanimous Media, he's eager to talk about his road from precocious, musically inclined quiet kid to an artist who's performed on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" with Chance the Rapper and, most recently, Lollapalooza—a road full of promise, loss, writer's block and ultimately perseverance.

"I was a really shy kid who would sit alone at the lunch table because I didn't have any friends," Saba, who still lives in Austin, says, laughing before adding, "It felt real Clark Kent-ish, like secretly I'm the greatest rapper of all time but you wouldn't know because I'm just over here in my corner."

He got out of his shell in high school at suburban Westchester's St. Joseph High School, where he'd pass out his music and, as a remarkable student, graduated at 16. That summer, he found poetry, attending Wicker Park's Young Chicago Authors and YouMedia at Harold Washington Library, where he met aspiring talents like NoName and Chance the Rapper. He remembers, "My whole life, I was the young one, the child prodigy who was good at everything, but when I got to this place, it was scary because I realized, 'Oh shit, I'm not the only one.'"

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His earliest available project is 2012's "GetComfortable" which featured single "Est. N19g4," which served as the catapult for his career. "That song was the first song that I put out that got around the city. That was when I felt I was actually a local artist," Saba remembers of the attention, also mentioning how his first interaction with Chance the Rapper was when he tweeted out the video. Along with "Est. N19g4," other tracks that raised his profile were "Heaux," a collaboration with Mick Jenkins, and Chance the Rapper's "Acid Rap" cut "Everybody's Something," for which Saba provided a stellar verse.

In 2014, he released his follow-up tape "ComfortZone," a musically daring mixtape that featured standout songs with Eryn Allen Kane, Jamila Woods and more, as well as cuts that had lines as gritty and resonate as "I trade a 401K for an AK/'Cause when my vitals stop/Grind don't stop." Saba explains, "'ComfortZone' was a really interesting journey for me. I had all of these expectations and high hopes of what it was going to do, and with most of them, it actually did. But it didn't happen right then." While it did lead to a booking at North Coast Music Festival and he received near unanimously positive feedback, he still wanted more. "Because my life hasn't changed in this drastic way, I was at home thinking I didn't do anything. It was a learning experience. I was 19 when I dropped it," he says.

Saba feat. Eryn Allen Kane 'Burnout' (Video) Saba feat. Eryn Allen Kane 'Burnout' (Video) SEE MORE VIDEOS

"Life is so different than when I was working on 'ComfortZone.' A lot of people that were close to me during that time are gone," Saba says solemnly. None more important to him than his uncle, who was a formative influence during his childhood. His uncle went to prison for a long time and then, soon after he was released, died in his sleep. Saba had only seen him one time after he left prison. "He passed in 2014, right after I put out 'ComfortZone.' It was everything taking a toll on my brain and my thinking, there was the loss of my uncle, my music wasn't where I wanted it to be and I was frustrated with my career," Saba recalls. He couldn't write, and in the entirety of 2015, he hardly released any music.

What he did release mostly consisted of guest appearances, most notably with Chance the Rapper, Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment. When they were creating "Surf" in early 2015, Trumpet invited Saba to the studio and played him what would become "SmthnthtIWnt," but because the atmosphere was so crowded, he couldn't create: "I asked him to email me the song and I actually just recorded and wrote in my basement," he says. It worked. "It was cool that they pretty much left it how I sent it. I thought they would change it," he adds.

Later on, Chance invited him out to record the hook for a new song he was working on called "Angels." Saba looks back on the experience: "There was hardly anyone in the studio—writing it was real organic, almost second nature." Though he wasn't working on his own songs, he says, "There were a lot of things like 'Surf,' 'Angels,' going on 'Colbert' for that song and a Martin Sky track called 'Reach' that kept the ball rolling—if it weren't for those things I'd be going insane."

A spark came when Saba unexpectedly ran into his old friend Benjamin Earl Turner at a show in Oakland, Calif., last fall. "Talking to him was crazy because he had no idea where I was at mentally or what all had changed since 'ComfortZone.' He was talking to me about coming to Chicago, getting into the studio and creating," he explains. The two had collaborated while Saba was working on his early projects, and Turner knew Saba's relentless creativity. Saba then came to a realization: "When he was describing my creation process, I realized, 'Damn, that's how I used to be in the studio.' I realized he was right: The constant second-guessing and all of that I was doing came to an instantaneous end because he knew what I could do."

He continues, "That conversation was the moment where I knew I had to go home, lock myself in the studio and make this happen." When asked if that's what he ended up doing, he laughs sheepishly, "I wanted to do it, but I was still confused on how." He also had to prepare for a big show at Abbey Pub in November 2015 with his new backing band Silent Party Music (who also support Eryn Allen Kane and Smino). "I was stressing real hard about that show, and then days before the show's supposed to happen, the Abbey Pub burns down. Like, 'What the hell? How does this happen in real life?'" Fortunately, smaller Logan Square venue Township made a more-than-suitable replacement, and during the rehearsals for the gig, Saba met the musician who would make him truly productive.