OKnice is an emcee from St. Paul who started releasing music about four years ago. He made a big step forward with his career earlier this year, when he released the excellent album, Have You Tried Being Happy? Now he’s back to close out the year with a new EP, The Sun Can’t Fix It.

After releasing a “big” project like Have You Tried Being Happy?, it can be helpful to work on something short and focused before trying to match the ambition of making another full-length album. For OKnice, he got together with producer Mikal Jones to work on this project, which allowed him to dig into a certain style and really explore a particular side of himself. What that means here is that Mikal Jones is putting together some modern trap-inspired beats, with a really deliberate pace and a tone that ranges from dark to melancholy. OKnice then feeds off of this energy and goes to explore the idea of “loss, grief, & moving forward (then backward, then forward again).” As you might imagine, it’s a fairly somber listening experience, but sometimes you need a project like this to help you get inside your own head and think about the loss you’ve experienced in your own life. OKnice is really opening up and getting inside his own feelings, but he’s also taking the time to craft some really beautiful poetry in the process. It might not be the big, happy note you want to end the year on, but for those that are looking for some hip hop when you’re in your feelings, OKnice has you covered.

The Sun Can’t Fix It looks fairly straightforward on paper, but in practice it’s a lot more than that. OKnice found the right partner in Mikal Jones to craft the soundscape as he digs into some difficult subject matter and gets really raw and personal as he works through his grief over the course of seven songs.