Sage, The 64th Wonder Levels Up: How a Chicago Rapper Turned Three Independent Albums into a Full-Blown Pokémon-Style Trilogy

Comissioned By: Brad Spliff

Written By: Ace Kashir

Chicago’s underground has always thrived on artists who blur lines, bend rules, and build their own ecosystems instead of waiting to be invited into them. From basement shows to internet micro-scenes, the city rewards artists who treat creativity like infrastructure. Sage, The 64th Wonder fits squarely into that lineage, but with Sage Wav: Red Version, Blue Version, and Green Version, he’s gone beyond a standard album rollout and into something closer to world-building.

Rather than releasing a single project and feeding it into the streaming machine, Sage, The 64th Wonder engineered a collectible era. These aren’t just albums — they’re artifacts. Each installment is distributed as a physical USB cartridge fabricated to evoke the iconic colored Pokémon games, transforming music consumption into something tactile, deliberate, and nostalgic. In a moment where most music evaporates into playlists, Sage Wav insists on presence.

In an era defined by frictionless access, Sage, The 64th Wonder introduces friction on purpose. You don’t just click play — you plug in, explore, and commit. The red, blue, and green editions don’t merely resemble their Game Boy ancestors; they approximate their aesthetic lineage with intentional craft, remixing childhood memory through hip-hop futurism. These are miniature monuments to a time when media felt personal, owned, and chosen.

Design Breakdown: Red, Blue, and Green Versions (Based on the Attached Photo)

The physical presentation of Sage Wav is where Sage, The 64th Wonder’s imagination fully crystallizes. The image shows three upright cartridge-style USBs mounted like display pieces, each one merging retro gaming culture with street-level illustration and anime-inspired sensibility. They feel less like merch and more like relics from a parallel timeline where hip-hop and handheld consoles grew up together.

Sage Wav: Red Version

The Red Version sits at the center like a boss character. Its saturated crimson casing carries a bold, heroic illustration: a figure posed with confidence against darker, mechanical forms behind him. The palette leans warm and confrontational, signaling urgency and momentum. Visually, it communicates action — a first strike, a beginning, a declaration. The playful “Super ShinTendo” spine parody seals the homage while keeping the tone irreverent rather than derivative.

This version feels designed for listeners who want Sage, The 64th Wonder at full power — focused, assertive, and forward-driving.

Sage Wav: Blue Version

The Blue Version cools the temperature but raises the atmosphere. Its cobalt cartridge frames artwork bathed in icy blues and electric highlights. Lightning-like accents and frosted textures surround the character, giving the impression of motion suspended in time. Where Red pushes outward, Blue floats inward.

Design-wise, this version suggests introspection, late-night listening, and emotional circuitry. It feels cinematic — like a winter level in a game where the player slows down to observe the environment rather than rush through it.

Sage Wav: Green Version

The Green Version is the most whimsical and exploratory of the trio. The cartridge glows with lime energy, housing artwork that looks sketchier and more playful than the others. The striped shirt, loose linework, and watercolor-style backdrop give the impression of a traveler rather than a fighter. It’s curiosity over confrontation.

This version’s design leans into discovery — the side quests, the weird NPCs, the parts of a game world you stumble into by accident. The visible signature on the cover further emphasizes that this is art you own, not just data you access.

The USB Era: A Rebellion Against the Stream

Choosing USB over streaming is not nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake — it’s political in a quiet way. Streaming reduces albums to background behavior. USB restores albums as experiences. You have to plug in. You have to decide. You have to interact.

Sage, The 64th Wonder’s move rejects the idea that music should live only in corporate pipelines. Instead, the Sage Wav trilogy circulates hand-to-hand, fan-to-fan, like bootlegs from the future. The USBs function as portable archives, holding not just tracks but intention. Ownership becomes part of listening again.

In a world where music is endlessly available but rarely cherished, Sage, The 64th Wonder builds scarcity with meaning rather than hype.

Nostalgia as Architecture, Not Decoration

Plenty of artists borrow from childhood aesthetics, but Sage, The 64th Wonder uses nostalgia structurally. The cartridge format isn’t cosmetic — it frames how the project is experienced. Choosing Red, Blue, or Green feels like choosing a path. It echoes the ritual of committing to a version and discovering what only your edition contains.

This approach transforms listeners into participants. You don’t just hear Sage Wav — you navigate it. The design encourages replay, comparison, conversation, and collection, just like the games it references.

A Collector’s Dream—and a Cultural Blueprint

Sage, The 64th Wonder’s trilogy signals something larger than a clever release: it’s a blueprint for independent artists in a post-streaming imagination. It blends hip-hop, illustration, gaming culture, and physical media into one coherent gesture. It asks what happens when rap albums behave more like objects, worlds, and choices than files.

In Chicago — a city built on sonic innovation and outsider systems — Sage Wav fits naturally into the tradition of artists creating infrastructure instead of chasing platforms.

Red, Blue, and Green don’t just mark three albums.They mark a philosophy.

A Chicago rapper turned music into a playable, collectible universe, distributing it through USB cartridges crafted to approximate the iconic silhouette, color theory, and tactile presence of legendary Pokémon games — while reshaping them into something unmistakably Sage, The 64th Wonder.

And in doing so, he didn’t just drop projects.

He pressed Start on a new way to listen.