Nourished By Time "The Passionate Ones" on POW Best Albums of 2025

Marcus Brown is one of us. The artist known as Nourished by Time named his album after a Purple Rain deep cut and he drops seven-minute Eric B. & Rakim remixes in his performances as a “dog whistle” to fellow “cultured individuals” (read: music nerds). After years of releasing music on his own under various aliases, Brown signed to tastemaker UK label XL on the strength of 2023’s Erotic Probiotic 2, recorded in his parents’ Baltimore basement. Because he was largely uninvolved with any real-world scenes, Brown developed his idiosyncratic sound in isolation, like a lifeform mutating in a petri dish.

On The Passionate Ones, Brown pairs reverb-soaked synths with grooves from boogie, house, trip-hop, and futurist pop girl groups; his unshowy voice fuses the album together, centered in the mix, largely without pitch correction, his Baltimore ties audible in the exotic shapes of his vowel sounds. “Baby Baby” is a too-many-tabs rocker where Brown chases sex and drugs and ponders that the powers that be can bomb Baltimore just as easily as they bomb Palestine. “If we all strike now, the gravy train stops,” he muses. When the jackboots kick down his door, they’ll find him with a lover and an excellent record collection. Who can relate?