Loyle Carner is an emcee from London who dropped his debut album, Yesterday’s Gone, in 2017. It received a lot of acclaim, including a nomination for the Mercury Prize. Now he’s come back with the difficult task of following up that debut with his sophomore effort, Not Waving, but Drowning.

A lot of the time, when sophomore albums feel like a slump, it’s because the artist or group second guess themselves trying to live up to expectations. Do I give everyone more of the same, or will that sound uninspired? Should I try something completely new, or will that alienate fans of the first album? Well, when it comes to Loyle Carner, you can just throw that all out of the window. That’s because from the second you push play with Not Waving, But Drowning, you know exactly who he is as an artist, and it’s very appealing to listen to. Carner isn’t trying to do too much with his music or trying to be anything he isn’t, he’s just presenting the best version of himself as an artist with this album. The interesting thing about that is that the best version of Loyle Carner is deeply flawed. Musically, the album is fantastic, with some truly great smooth jazz and R&B flavor to the production that sets the mood and gets your head nodding and your toes tapping. However, what really draws you in is how intimate and open Carner is as an emcee. There are moments across the album where Carner hits upon some more complex rhythms and rhyme schemes that remind you that he’s a skilled emcee in that way, but the majority of this album succeeds because of the deep connection you’ll make with Carner as a listener. The way that Carner opens up and pours his heart out, it feels more like you’re going on a long walk with an old friend that you haven’t seen in a while rather than listening to a dope hip hop album. It also helps that Carner has this easy-going, warm tone to his voice that makes it sound like your having a conversation and listening to him talk about love, mental health, his family, and his hopes and dreams going forward. It’s all incredibly bare and it all out on the table. To frame the album, he opens with a letter to his mom, “Dear Jean,” and it closes with a letter from his mom, “Dear Ben.” To help round out the family affair happening on the album, Carner also includes a few collaborators, such as Tom Misch, Sampha, and Jorja Smith, who all add some beauty and fun to the music and help Carner sound comfortable on the mic and deliver these incredibly personal rhymes.

Not Waving, but Drowning is not a huge album, and it doesn’t contain the song of the summer or anything like that. What it does contain, though, is some of the most beautiful, emotional, and open hip hop you’ll hear this year, delivered in a really thoughtful and musical fashion. Loyle Carner could have pivoted off the success off of his first album and tried to score some crossover singles or whatever, but instead he chose to stick to his guns and make the music that best represented himself, and we got just that. This is the type of album to listen to on a long road trip, where you can spend some real quality time with it and just let it all soak in and put yourself in conversation with each track.