If you’ve ever worked customer service, you’ve spent most shifts pondering your existence, weighing your options: What the hell am I doing with my life? How can I find time to pursue my passions when I’m this exhausted? Should I apply to grad school again? These musings are nothing new to Marcus Brown, the Baltimore artist known as Nourished By Time, who has run the gamut of public-facing jobs to support his music career, with his enigmatic and spontaneous approach to R&B yearning to break out of our inescapable capitalist society. “9 2 5,” the second single from his forthcoming album, The Passionate Ones, isn’t necessarily triumphant when it comes to taking your job and shoving it, but Brown sees a light at the end of the tunnel, and they look like the strobes on the dancefloor.

“9 2 5” follows the familiar story of the starving artist, built on glimmers of submerged Baltimore club motifs. We know this creative all too well; he works his days waiting tables before heading home to compose music, and attempts to be responsible (“The man ain’t sober, no matter what he told ya,” Brown winks). Loops of bright piano, pattering bass, and Brown’s chopped-up and sampled vocals lend to the song’s melancholic spirit. The song is almost purposefully static, mimicking the feeling of being trapped in a perpetual work cycle while the years keep sliding past you. Yet even with his fatalistic view, Brown does an about-face, knowing better days are ahead: “You won’t always be here,” he croons in his gravelly baritone. It’s a letter to himself that he’s left out hoping you’ll read it, too.