The New York-based singer and rapper Topaz Jones has been perfecting a sound that draws on the spaced-out, aquarian synth-funk of the ’70s and ’80s, as well as the various strains of rap music that also draw on those older sounds. He’s been impressing us all year with tracks like “Toothache” and “Nectar,” and today, he’s got a new one called “Cotton Fields.”

“Cotton Fields is a lush, enveloping haze of funk. The beat staggers slowly off to the side, and the mix fills up with guitars and keyboards and slow-rolling synth-bass. Jones, the son of old-school funk musicians, has a preternatural ease with sounds like these. And over that self-produced beat, he sings and raps, blurring the line between both things.

Talking to Pigeons & Planes about the new song, Jones says this:

I was tripping in the woods with some of my closest friends from childhood my first year out of high school and I had a moment where I looked up and saw this really crazy hallucination in the sky. It reminded me of a lot of the simple things I was losing sight of. I sketched it down in a notebook and it always stuck with me. When I made the beat for ‘Cotton Fields’ it really sounded like that moment to me.

Listen to “Cotton Fields” below, via Pigeons & Planes:

The two-song single “Cotton Fields” b/w “For The Better” is coming soon.