A Fireside Chat With Nourished by Time

No one makes music like Marcus Brown, the acerbic and kindhearted 29-year-old who goes by Nourished by Time. Combining his love for the harmonic ecstasy of ’90s R&B, the shaggy synths of new wave, the rhythmic cadences of rap, and whatever else he happens to be feeling, his new album The Passionate Ones is an elevation of the promise he made on his breakout 2023 debut, Erotic Probiotic 2. His jagged rubdown jams posit that romantic love is inextricable from community, and that we could figure out how to save ourselves in the soar of a gospel vocal. The Passionate Ones is one man’s exegesis of trying to keep his heart clean amid late-capitalist American absurdity, and it can be earnest and funny as surely as it can sound wistful and bright—all of Brown’s complexities as a musician and person are right there in his bubbly synths, arena-worthy guitars, and baritone mewls. It’s easily one of my favorite records of the year. 

I first interviewed Brown two years ago, when he was playing opening slots solo and dreaming about the day he could make enough money to bring along a live band on tour. Last week, when we reunited at Rough Trade’s record store in Rockefeller Center for a live Q&A, about a hundred fans listened intently between the stacks—including Carrington Edmonson, Brown’s best friend and bassist in the band he finally was able to gather, with his gear in tow. (They had just finished practice; both now live in New York City.) It was a very “you’ve come a long way, baby” moment. An edited version of our conversation is below. 

You’ve always been a really interesting producer, and on this album you're doing some kind of freaky things. For instance, there’s that counter rhythm near the beginning of "Automatic Love" that sounds like someone’s taking a bag of chips and scrunching them. 

Marcus Brown: Everyone always talks about that, and I never hear it! I think it’s just a clap, right? That’s the funny part: I hate looking for sounds. I think it takes away from the creative process, and I don't want any barrier between me and the music. A lot of the sounds are probably just presets. If I wanted to sit down and make a good sound on a synthesizer, I know how to do that, but it’s just more efficient to take what someone else did and change it to how I want it. And it really doesn’t matter if you have a Moog or a Poly D, because it’s all about the context in which you’re using the sounds. Like, I wasn’t able to buy a nice synthesizer until 2021, when I won six grand off of Dogecoin.

OK, we need to know more about that. What were you doing in 2021?

I was living in L.A., and I had a mental breakdown, so I just drove across the country [back to Baltimore to live with my parents]. The trip took two weeks, I was by myself, and it was emotional—I was just like, “Music isn’t happening, this isn’t gonna work, but I want to give it one more chance." I didn’t want to move back with my parents, but I had spent all my money in L.A.—I think I had a couple hundred dollars. It was really bad.  

Then I found the Dogecoin thing on Twitter and put in, like, $200. I’m not promoting crypto right now, by the way. Doge then was not like Doge now, at all—it was just a stupid, silly little thing. But I made six grand, and I just put it all back into the music. I bought a Juno-106 synthesizer, and then I spent probably as much as what it cost to get it repaired at a really cool place in Philly called Bell Tone Synth Works.  

That was really the start of my being able to make music, because I was using a lot of presets and learning how to actually manipulate filters and build out the sounds. I couldn’t have made Erotic Probiotic II without that synth. 

A lot of The Passionate Ones was also made on that crypto synth. It’s got really good bass sounds, too. Most of my sounds are coming from that thing; there’s a lot of MIDI on it, and I kind of taught myself how to sample. I wanted the album to sound more soulful, and I always thought sampling is the best way to do that. It’s a really futuristic way to do it, as well. 

Let’s talk about that soulfulness—you have the song “Jojo,” which I assume refers to Jojo of K-Ci and Jojo?

No, but that’s probably better! The song talks about addiction, and it was like the monkey on his back—Jojo the monkey. The album is really inspired by Jodeci, though. In the ’90s, you had your more clean-cut groups like Boyz II Men, and then Jodeci were just from the hood—they were raw, and they were wearing leather with no shirt in the rain. They just reminded me of—I don’t wanna compare them to Guided by Voices, but they always had a really lo-fi vibe to me. My favorite harmonies in gospel are when they’re kinda off—when the person kind of can’t sing a little bit. I’m never really striving for perfection in a way—I’m trying to do as well as I can, but I love those imperfections. Also, everything I ever do is gonna be inspired by SWV—that’s my north star, and they don’t get enough credit. Nineties R&B turned into neo-soul, which is just as soulful, but neo-soul is also very tame. It’s about feeling a vibe and feeling good and keeping that rhythm going. 

But I don’t see music as genres so much as I see it as mediums. Like with “Baby Baby”—I was reading some of the reviews, and everyone’s so afraid to say that I’m rapping, but it’s OK, I’m rapping on that! But I’m also using rap as a medium. That was the song I was most worried about—being accepted using rap as a medium, because you’ve gotta do it right. You’ve gotta be believable. But also, sometimes in hip-hop, there’s a certain character you have to play, and I didn’t want to do that. I just wanted to be myself. And isn’t that the number one rule in hip-hop, to just be yourself? It’s why certain rappers are having certain problems, you know?

I like that little subtle reference.

I don't think it was subtle, it’s Drake. [laughs] 

Apart from that, you are quiet-storming a lot on this album, vocally.

I was trying to sing better, because I had Covid when I recorded Erotic Probiotic 2. Boy, I did not know that record was gonna get big. I had just been in London for the first time and was really inspired. Then I got Covid, but I was like, I’m not gonna let this stop me. So a lot of the vocals are me recovering—my voice was the last thing that recovered. All those takes are just Covid voice. I didn’t wanna say anything, because people always have so much to say about my voice, and I think it’s so fascinating, and I agree with them a lot of times. But my favorite singer was Black Francis from the Pixies—like, a non-singer-singer kind of thing. I always loved how he manipulated his voice, and his songs were about religion in these really cool ways. He was just so strange. He took rock music in all these different directions. 

It’s all context. Like, I am not Bob Dylan in the “We Are the World” documentary, when they put him next to Michael Jackson and Ray Charles and Al Jarreau, and were just like, “Sing next,” and he had a mental breakdown. He was just like, Bro, what? And then Stevie Wonder had to go in and mimic Bob Dylan’s voice so he could sing his part. The point I’m trying to make is that Bob Dylan’s a great singer, but if you place him in the context of singer-singers, it’s gonna be different. I don’t see myself as a singer-singer. I see myself as an R&B singer through a new wave context. I’m trying to get an emotional  feeling out of myself. I’d love to be able to sing like… what’s y’all boy who be doing the flips? Benson Boone? Would I love to do that? No, I’m just being a hater. But I know my limitations, and I know where I sit, and I’m not trying to do certain things. 

I wanted to ask about the wonderful “Baby Baby” video, which you filmed at the American Dream mega-mall in New Jersey. It seems like a critique of American capitalism, but you also seem like you’re having fun in the video.

No, I did not have fun there! [laughs] I was just stressed. I went to a bar; I was worried that I made an ad for American Dream. I was trying to make this statement—we’ve known for half a decade that malls haven’t been working, but you just built a giant one in New Jersey? Why? There’s an ice skating rink, a ski slope, a roller coaster, a children’s train track. Multiple food courts. If you think about it too much, it gets really depressing. I tried to make it a tongue-in-cheek thing, but the comments were like, “Man, you just made it look fun!” My mom’s like, “Yeah, I’m meaning to go!” That’s not what I was trying to do. [laughs] 

It was fun to relive that communal mall thing, but we didn't buy anything! We didn't buy one thing. We did buy lunch, because they have a Jollibee in there, and I love Jollibee. 

You also have that line in the song, “If you can bomb Palestine, you can bomb Mondawmin,” which is an area of Baltimore as well as the name of a mall there.

It’s in West Baltimore, where my mom’s from and where my grandmother lives. I used to go to that mall to get my haircut. There’s a really cool record store there. I went there a lot when I was a kid, but it got less cool as I got older. Mondawmin is a hood mall—it’s deep in the cut. Everybody’s just chillin’. In the early 2000s, when Subway was really poppin’, they had this mascot outside—but instead of “Eat Fresh,” he was telling everyone, “Hey, keep it fresh, keep it fresh!” 

I was in college when the Freddie Gray protests happened, but they started in that area. In America, we have so much exceptionalism, where we just think everything happens “over there.” But I’ve always thought, If anyone can get bombed, anyone can get bombed. 

I’ve always thought it was important to strengthen the Black and Palestinian bond, and that lyric was my way of doing it. But it’s also making a bigger statement about capitalism and why these things continue to happen. That’s also why I filmed “Baby Baby” at the mall, because what’s more absurd than American Dream? The whole video concept was that we were trying to be like aliens looking for this thing called the American dream—but we stumble into the mall.

There needs to be an Age of Aquarius-type change in the heart of the globe. It’s gonna look like taking music off streaming, it’s gonna look like not buying iPhones. It’s gonna be ugly and not sexy to do things that go against what we have been fed as Americans—but we are part of the problem if we think that it can’t happen.