“Last night I didn’t sleep too well,” says Tyler Linkman on “That Wall,” the opener to his six-track EP Garden Flavours. It’s a straightforward but powerful insight that provides the emotional template for his project. “[But] I ain’t stressing if I hit that wall at all,” he concludes. Throughout the EP, Linkman ruminates on the pressures of growing older while still trying to maintain a firm grip on love, success, and his mental well-being. On “OK,” the Johannesburg-based artist employs warbling synths and golden-age drumwork to ask the centuries-old existential question: What are we doing here? “How you doing?/Man, this life so confusing/Why we here and what we doing?/It’s all too much.”
On the Marcus Harvey-assisted “Been a Minute,” he reminisces on an old love interest, while “Dreaming,” which features Mars Baby, is a boom-bap-inspired number on the limitations of capitalistic excess. The album’s coup de grâce comes in the form of “Levitate,” an 808-laden track featuring rapper Priddy Ugly. Here, Linkman puts aside his philosophical musings to position himself as hip-hop royalty. “These rappers cappin’ way too much/I talk my shit then back it up/You know it’s only on the cusp.”