Dare we conjure the ‘P’ word over Nourished By Time’s second album? The alt R&B singer/songwriter/producer aka Marcus Brown willingly opens the door to Prince comparisons in naming The Passionate Ones as a nod to Purple Rain track ‘The Beautiful Ones’. The title track is pure Prince pop ache, while the loose funk guitar, expansive synth bursts and agonised vocal appeal of opening track ‘Automatic Love’ recalls the Minneapolis maestro’s purplest patch.

Brown is a product of another industrial US city, Baltimore, and aims to represent his working-class background with a mix of grace, beauty, sleaze and sadness. His sound is hard to pin down. Classic influences are tempered by modern production, a broadly soulful canvas is embellished with a vocal which owes as much to drawling indie slackers as it does to retro funkateers. Genres are slung together and somehow stick. ‘Crazy People’, with its mix of shimmering dance track, low-slung funk and wiggy R&B, is not far off George Clinton territory.

Elsewhere, he aces freeform hip hop on ‘Jojo’, with guest Birmingham rapper Tony Bontana, and touches on Italian piano house on soulful club track ‘9 2 5’. There’s no reason with hooks like this that he couldn’t go on to challenge The Weeknd as the don of trippy R&B. Which brings us to another ‘p’ word: potential. Album highlight, ‘Max Potential’, is suitably named: Brown may not be expressing much positivity in the lyrics but its twinkly 80s synth pop, pitch-shifted backing vocals and rock chords tell a different story.

The Passionate Ones by Nourished By Time is out now on XL Recordings.