For many of us outside Chicago, the first piece of Chicago rap we heard was Resurrection, a 1994 album from a 22-year-old South Side rapper named Common Sense. Common was a fun voice -- lively, showily clever, capable of being vulnerable and funny and tough all at once. But the thing about Resurrection that really struck me the first time I heard it wasn't Common himself. It was how pretty the whole album was. Producer No I.D., himself a neophyte at the time, was sampling tinkly jazz and old soul music, and he was bringing out the welcoming warmth of Common's voice by leaving room for him to find melody, to play around with the open space in those beats. Right now, Chicago is in the midst of a ridiculous rap-music renaissance, with a whole scene of clever, emotionally sharp kids who grew up in the same after-school open-mic scene. Just this year, Chance The Rapper, Noname, Joey Purp, Towkio, Vic Mensa and the scene-adjacent singer Jamila Woods have all put out records worth hearing, and I'm probably still missing a few. But other than Chance and Woods, none of them have chased beauty the way the 22-year-old West Side rapper Saba does on his new Bucket List Project.