Nourished By Time

After a breakout year, the Baltimore-based artist continues to craft songs that are instantly catchy but inconspicuously radical. 

Words: Khalila Douze

Images: Sophie Hur

Styling: Pero Šimić 

Photography Assistant: Tyler Andrew

In recent years, I’ve returned to the physical to satisfy a need for unearthing musical easter eggs. Collecting vinyl and playing records has become a mindfulness practice. And this goes beyond the act of seeking: the ritual of pulling a 12-inch from its sleeve, placing it onto a turntable, and guiding the needle to a track demands presence. The sounds that emanate from albums recorded decades ago lure me into the past, while uncharted sonic territories imagined on modern underground projects coax me into possible futures.

To be introduced to new music within the confines of the algorithm, and to actually enjoy it, can leave you feeling like you’ve been tricked. Often what’s served up feels a little bit off – too obvious, too calculated to our tastes – to the point that new discoveries are met with suspicion rather than the thrill of unearthing something fresh. This suspicion is somewhat justified, when we know how vulnerable our streaming landscapes and social media feeds are to manipulation, and how the mainstream music industry exploits this. Perhaps another reason we enjoy the idea of having discovered something authentically is because in the digital age, we signpost parts of our identity through the things we like and what they convey about us. 

But in rare cases, you must concede to the algorithm. I reluctantly admit that after amassing thousands of hours of data on my musical tastes, it occasionally gets it right. Nourished By Time, the music project of Baltimore artist and Berklee College of Music alum Marcus Brown, had that effect. I was introduced to his critically acclaimed 2023 album Erotic Probiotic 2 when another album playing on Spotify had run its course. Before checking the app and learning Brown’s stage name, I was drawn to songs like “The Fields,” a dizzy, melancholic, and existential contemplation of consumerism with an irresistible beat, and “Shed That Fear,” a groovy and wholesome enlightenment anthem, woven into a record full of cavernous, larger-than-life vocals reminiscent of Bootsy Collins. Enamored by cinematic songs that sounded, paradoxically, both seasoned and raw, invoking the nostalgia of an 80s teen drama as well as the portal-opening promise of post-genre digital storytelling, I succumbed to the algorithm and became an instant fan of Nourished By Time.

Catching Chickens, Nourished By Time’s latest project released in March on XL Recordings, successfully continues Brown’s experimentation with genre and self-expression. Echoes of his appreciation for folk and indie rock (“Hell of A Ride,” “Poison-Soaked”) meet wistful balladry (“Romance in Me”) and cathartic, splendid dream pop (“Hand On Me,” “Had Ya Called”) across a project that explores themes of loneliness, the traumas of contemporary capitalism, love, and heartbreak. Brown’s ability to distill thorny discourse into poetic, resonant earworms is noteworthy. “It’s super cerebral but also mad simple,” Brown says, explaining the meaning behind the name Nourished By Time. “It's just like, if you show up every day, good things might happen.” Calling from a studio session in New York City, the enigmatic artist discusses his ‘post-R&B’ sound, how the music industry mimics the stock market, and what he thinks about being called radical.

Khalila Douze: You've done a lot of interviews since the release of Erotic Probiotic 2. How does it feel? Are you exhausted from talking to people about your music yet?

Nourished By Time: No, I like talking about it. I don't like when it's super dumbed down and it fits a certain agenda. I just like talking about music in general, and I'm really grateful that people care. If people have questions about my work, I definitely want to talk about it. I see press as a creative tool, and especially now, as artists have a lot more freedom and control in how they're perceived. It’s really fun to watch the questions change as I put out more music and as more people know who I am. I don't really mind it as long as it's a partnership. Writing is an art as well, so it’s not just about the music.

KD: Your Twitter (X) bio describes your work as ‘post-R&B’—is that something you classified your music as yourself, or something someone else did and you adopted? What does this term mean to you?

NBT: Yeah, ‘post-R&B’ is something I came up with, but I'm sure I'm not the first person to come up with it. It's a term that I like to describe my music with because I feel like it opens me up, and it also keeps me bound and grounded at the same time. Also, I feel like every other genre gets a ‘post,’ except for Black music. I think Frank Ocean is ‘post-R&B’. I think a lot of The Weeknd’s early music was ‘post-R&B’. I don't think I'm the first artist to do it. I just think it should be taken seriously as a genre. Right now, R&B is the medium that I'm most interested in pulling apart and manipulating and exploring. But also, I don't really care. People are going to call me what they're going to call me.

KD: Why R&B specifically? Is it music you grew up on?

NBT: Yeah, it's definitely music I grew up on. It's also really easy to manipulate because you can have really good songs. The structure of the music can be really well written. You can do what Janet Jackson did and put more futuristic production on it, or you could do more hip-hop production on it. It's just a mutable medium to me. It’s also really emotional. You find traces of gospel in it, you find traces of country music. For example, SWV sounds like country music to me. 

My brain is just trained to see commonalities in things and create super highways. Maybe I just want something that I can burst out of. When I first started making music, I was making folk music, and it was very acoustic guitar-heavy. And then, I got really obsessed with Foxygen and Mac DeMarco. Later I had this epiphany that I needed to return home to the music that I grew up listening to. I wound up having these two worlds—the music that I had explored and created, as well as the music I had gotten from my family and my parents, and just growing up in Baltimore and listening to the radio. I had this epiphany when I was living in Boston that I had to mix the two together and then that would be my sound. It was a good five or six years before I really figured it out. Even now, I’m still trying to figure it out.

KD: Last thing from Twitter (X). You tweeted that the music industry is the stock market, and artists are stocks. Tell me more.

NBT: I like to find the commonalities in things or boil them down. I won money off of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin and I remember spending three months like a heroin addict on the cryptocurrency stock market Robinhood. You want your stock to go up when you invest in something, and you hope you get your money back. This applies to music in some ways: [For artists] it’s an advance [from a record label], and [the label] hopes to get [its] money back, which [for artists and labels] is the recouping. In a label situation, I'm the stock and I have to perform well or else [they’re] not going to buy me again. That's just how it works, and it works that way with everything, in any industry really, especially entertainment. It's just like the stock market. I don't mean it in a super negative way, I just think other artists should know.

When I signed with XL, my brain wasn't like, ‘Oh, I did it. This is the money. This is the cash day. I don't have to worry about money anymore.’ [It just means] I can focus on music now for a couple years. This entire process is up to the artist. The success, the decisions you make, who your managers are, who your agents are, what label you choose—it's a whole package. All these people have to know who you are and how your brain works, and you have to know who you are or it is just not going to go well. 

I had the luxury of being some random kid in a basement for 10 years just making music. But I think it is important to know how the music industry works because it's really unregulated. It's like the art market. Streaming came in and changed the whole landscape of everything. Anything can happen and change the rules completely. That's why the artists are [like] stocks. We actually have more agency than stocks. We can try to band together and change things the same way that actors did.

KD: What did you major in at Berklee?

NBT: I originally majored in songwriting, but I hated it. The songwriting department didn't use any Black examples ever, and the white examples they used were trash. They didn't even use the fire white artists. They were just trying to produce a very specific type of songwriter that doesn't even really exist now. They didn't care about production, they didn't care about hip-hop. They weren't trying to make real artists. There was only one teacher there who gave me a shot, his name was Pat Patterson. He just let me be weird and write weird ass songs, and experiment and have fun.

KD: I saw the word ‘radical’ used to describe your work. Is there activism in your music? Is that getting projected onto what you do?

NBT: I do think it is being projected, but also that I'm giving people reason to project that onto the music. But I don't really think I'm saying anything that crazy. [Something] my best friend said the first time she saw one of my shows was, “Oh, you're just saying what we talk about in our conversations.” We talk about the state of the world, relationships, all types of stuff. The things I care about are parts of who I am. When I'm writing music, I want it to be true to me. 

I do want to challenge things with my music, but I don't want it to be preachy. I don't want to tell people what to do. If I really wanted to, I could make a whole Public Enemy, Rage Against The Machine sounding album—and those are geniuses. I guess I'm trying to trick people into listening to leftist pop music, trying to sneak leftist pop music into the mainstream, or just get people to think of these things because I think pop music should reflect the times. I definitely don't consider myself an activist because I know real activists. I know I'm mad lazy, and I'm also mad stubborn, and I know I'm not a big protest guy. I do go to them, but I don't really like going to them. It’s more that I appreciate the importance of going to them. I want to figure out how to make it cooler and sexier and “vibe-ier” to be a leftist, and to question the government. It is really not cool to be a pop star or rapper who just shits on poor people right now. I don't even want celebrities to really stand up for political things anymore. We saw where that got us. I want celebrities to put money into communities and for there to be more stable organizations for that money to be funneled into, so that it actually reaches the people who need it. If you're comparing me to the average American, I would say maybe I'm pretty radical. I wouldn't be too mad at just watching this shit be burned down and rebuilt. 

KD: We are doing an interview for Carhartt WIP. It’s a brand that connotes ideas of manual labor, but is also marketed and glamorized in a high-end, luxury space with designer collaborations. I am curious, given everything you just spoke on, how you feel about doing this interview?

NBT: It’s a really good question. One of my first jobs was a construction job. It is kind of funny to be on both ends. I think it's very American. A lot of the style from people who were mad poor and just trying to come up with shit is now the style for Balenciaga and Gucci. There's times where I'll see a homeless dude and I'd be like, ‘Damn, he's got that shit on.’ But that's the style now. It's weird copying that.

There's probably a psychological aspect to it or some kind of phenomenon. As long as I'm able to speak my mind and be pure, I'll use almost whatever platform. The minute I'm up here spouting some liberal bullshit or conservative bullshit or just some brainwashed shit that's not of my heart, then that's the problem. 

KD: You reference memories and the future in your music, and you go by the name Nourished by Time. There’s both a nostalgia to your music, as well as a sound that feels like it’s ahead of the current moment. 

NBT: It definitely is all that. My lyrics mean a lot, but I kind of forget about them sometimes. [Writing] is a very cosmic and cerebral thing that I don't really know how to explain, but I do try to capture in the music. People always say my work is influenced by the 80s and 90s, and they're definitely right, but I'm not really focused on that. I don't see myself as a revival artist or anything. I'm definitely not interested in doing things exactly the way they were done in the 80s, but I think that's just one of the last times people wrote full songs. I'm just writing B sections and C sections. I'm just completing a thought. I love that time, because before, certain things were just built better. The quality of things was better. But, I'm definitely not interested in making music that is just repeating something that's already been done. I see that as a failure.

This editorial was taken from WIP magazine issue 10, available at Carhartt WIP stores and our online shop.