The gifted and idiosyncratic St. Louis rapper Smino doesn’t release new music all that often, and when he does, he does it without two much advance warning. Two years after the release of his Luv 4 Rent LP, Smino is back with Maybe In Nirvana, a new LP that he just announced a few days ago. There were no advance singles, and it seems pretty clear that Smino intended for the whole world to hear it all at once.

Smino has always been more melodic than most rappers, and he leans into that on Maybe In Nirvana. He often goes into his effortless double-time delivery here, but he always does it in a needling singsong that often sounds less like rapping and more like singing. Occasionally, he goes into the garbled, Auto-Tuned splatter-scatter delivery that kids today love so much, and it cuts against the neo-soul whump of the production.

Maybe In Nirvana is a pretty short album — 10 tracks in 29 minutes — and Smino wrote the whole thing during the pandemic, waiting for the right moment to drop it. Guests include Ravyn Lenae, Thundercat, Bun B, and BJ The Chicago Kid, while the production comes from collaborators like Groove, Monte Booker, Kenny Beats, and Phoelix. Below, check out the album and Smino’s video for his song “Dear Fren.”

Maybe In Nirvana is out now on Zero Fatigue Records.