Album Review: SAVE! by Ben Reilly
Ben Reilly spent years building a persona that could outrun doubt, but this catches him in the moment where the mask slips. SAVE! tracks what happens when the confidence gets real stakes attached.
Ben Reilly isn’t writing from the high-wire energy that fueled Freelance anymore. He’s writing from the pressure that came after it. His debut album, SAVE!, leans on the Heroman mythology and the comic-panel skits, but the posture is different now—looser in delivery, sharper in intention, and tangled up in the things he used to sprint past. The bravado hasn’t vanished, but it breaks enough for him to talk about the weight behind it: the father he couldn’t look up to, the friends he’s lost, the loyalty he can’t shake, the fear that the work might not outpace the wounds. It’s an album built around that shift, where the superhero setting stops being costume play and starts sounding like a man negotiating what he owes to himself versus what everyone else keeps asking of him.
Ben’s superhero persona allowed him to blow through verses on Freelance. There, the attraction was velocity with acrobatic punchlines and wit, delivered at breakneck speed. On SAVE!, he begins by reminding us of that skill, bragging that he’s “a mix between Peter Parker and Shawn Carter” and flexing over swirling horns on opener “Heroman.” It’s an intentional nod to the older tapes—the comic‑book skit, the snappy call back to Snoop Dogg’s classic debut single (“What’s my motherfuckin’ name?”), and the confidence of a rapper who feels bulletproof. What follows, though, is a pivot. “Osborn Park” recounts his childhood fights and near‑misses with mortality. He still boasts, but his boasts are tied to a survival story. He admits that he hid a butterknife in his tube sock after being stomped, and by the time the song morphs into its half‑time coda, he’s aware of the toll: “Please excuse the city/This shit not friendly/Braincells empty/Prison cells plenty.” Those lines would have been throwaway boasts on Freelance, but on here, they carry weight because they sit next to recollections of trauma.
That awareness threads the whole record. On “Walk…Before You Fly!” he channels admonitions from his mother—“Fuck the streets, I raised a different kid”—and reminds himself to “walk by faith and not by sight.” The groove is buoyant, but the message is a warning, as growth takes time, and the path to power requires caution. His tone is calmer, his cadence less frenetic. He can still toss off a clever line (“Baby gimme face like an exfoliant”), but he no longer crowds each bar with jokes. The pacing and subject matter shift drastically on “Super Buick,” a song that recalls the hustler narratives of his early work. The first verse lists all he ever wanted—money, status, knowledge of his absent father—and the hook barks at anyone not talking money. Guest rapper Westside Boogie delivers a strong, personal verse about riding buses with his mother and resisting pressure to join a gang. It is one of the few features that add perspective rather than simply filling space. Ben’s third verse returns to his bravado, but even his boasts hint at wanting a “blue face” and also wanting a new home for his crew.
SAVE! reaches for cohesion through its repeated concepts—power, responsibility, survival, and the difficulty of saving others when you’re barely holding yourself together. The central theme develops most clearly in the run of songs from “Happy New Year” through “Hero Complex.” “Happy New Year” paints a bleak scene on the first of the month, where the city he represents is “murderous” and he refuses to run from the violence surrounding him. A countdown turns into gunfire, and his hook (“Shots rang out, Happy New Year”) transforms a celebration into a trauma flashback. Instead of glamorizing the chaos, he questions the cycle and his role in it. “Rescue” brings in singer Jai’Len Josey to ask whether anyone would catch him if he fell while he searches for love again, while also admitting he’s “seconds from wrecking my mind.” The vulnerability in his voice matches the plea in the hook, and the song functions as a bridge between his superhero persona and the human behind it.
This leads directly into “Bulletproof,” an interlude that strips away any remaining bravado. He asks Mother Earth if she’s proud of him and wonders who will look out for him. He states that his heart is made of Kevlar, but then concedes, “A man of steel is just a man, still/Faster than a speeding bullet/But my feelings at a stand‑still.” This is the sort of emotional honesty absent from his earlier projects. The track is short but potent, and its minimal sampled-based loop leaves room for his confession to resonate. “Hero Complex” pushes the internal narrative further. In three verses built around conversations with his mother, he hears her tell him that he can’t look for a father in his friends or count on the world to pretend for him. She questions the cost of his heroism and implies that he must save himself before saving others. Ben later admits, “I got a hero complex/I’m tryna do my best/I couldn’t even save myself from primordial sex/Save this money like you said but didn’t care to invest/Unprepared for success but I’m prepared to finesse.” The rhymes are tight, but the content is messy and human. He acknowledges irresponsibility, lust, and short‑sightedness. Zyah Belle’s hook asks repeatedly, “What you gon’ do when the hero needs saving?” and there’s no easy answer.
Nowhere is Ben’s growth more corporeal than on “Responsibility.” Over a soulful sample, he looks at his lineage and the cycles of neglect that shaped him. He opens with “Child is the father of man/My mother chose a child to come and father a man,” confronting the immaturity of the men she brought into his life. He recounts stepfathers who couldn’t handle money, who disappeared into depression, who hid liquor bottles under his mattress. He wrestles with the jealousy he feels when he watches his father care for other children. The repeated plea “Papa, can you hear me?” conveys a longing that braggadocio can’t hide. As he moves through these stories, he also criticizes himself: “You was too wild to change for a new child/A victim to your childhood, a victim to a shootout/A victim irresponsible, a victim of unused power/A victim that my mama knew, a victim that was too proud/Pride is the father of the ego.” The song draws blood because he stops positioning himself as a victim or savior and instead confronts his complicity and inherited flaws. It’s one of the record’s strongest records.
The album’s final stretch tries to tie its threads together with mixed results. “Paul” is a tribute to a cousin who taught him to hustle and chase women. The song’s playful tone and slapping beat lighten the mood, but lyrically, it feels like it belongs on a different project. After the emotional excavation of “Responsibility,” it reads like an outtake. “If This Be My Destiny!” swings back to introspection, depicting him trapped in an underwater bunker with “the weight of the world on my shoulders.” He can’t breathe, his nerves are shot, and yet he’s determined to survive because people are counting on him. The tension in his voice sells the metaphor and ties back to the hero narrative without resorting to cliché. The closing track “Power” reiterates that he’s carrying “all this power on me,” but it goes further by admitting that he traded nights of sleep for that power and doesn’t yet know the cost. He wonders if a few years from now he’ll see the price, and then he boasts about being “afraid of heights until my frame of mind got heightened.”
The disc also suffers when it leans too hard on hero metaphors without fresh insight. Yet these improprieties are outweighed by the leaps forward. Ben has learned to slow his delivery, letting lines breathe and using space to emphasize vulnerability. The production, while still rooted in trap and East Coast hip‑hop, adapts to his mood swings—sparse drums for confessions, thundering bass for defiance. Most importantly, he allows contradictions to coexist. He can claim his loyalty is “bulletproof” one minute and confess that he can’t recall the last time he didn’t share his open home the next. The tension between humility and hubris, clarity and swagger, never fully resolves—but that might be the point. He can play Heroman and still admit that he needs rescue. This entanglement is what makes SAVE! feel like a continuation of his earlier work and a meaningful departure.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Hero Complex,” “Responsibility,” “If This Be My Destiny!”