“I’ve been going through a lot of transition,” he tells EW. “LIMBO is really about being somewhere between here and there.” Pell is referring to the record’s themes of anxiety, isolation, and existential uncertainty, but when EW connects with the rapper by phone, he’s in a more literal sort of limbo.

“I’m Ubering around L.A.,” he quips after directing his driver to park behind a Minicooper (“I haven’t seen one of those in a minute!”) and explaining how to find him online (“P-E-L-L. Like the scholastic grant.”). “I’m spreading my music from Uber to Uber. From sea to shining… yeah, OK. Nevermind. Not that joke.”

Pell has reason to be in good spirits. His latest mixtape, last year’s Floating While Dreaming, put him on the national hip-hop community’s radar, and LIMBO — much of which is produced by TV On the Radio’s Dave Sitek — refines his sound even further. Plus, he adds, he just moved to L.A. and has “had somewhat of an interesting love life the past eight months — like I had my first serious girlfriend.”

His still-strong romance inspired one of LIMBO‘s tracks in particular, the ebullient “Queso,” which EW premieres below. “I feel like the time leading up to us officially dating, it was actually a situation where I was courting [her],” he says. “I’m old-fashioned, because my mom raised me to be. But it’s like, I had everything at my disposal! I had girls saying s–t and whatnot, like any other rapper or any other person that’s pursuing this life. And sometimes that’s not the most fulfilling thing. The only person you want to call is the one person who probably won’t answer. Essentially, this is me, personifying that in a song.”

Check “Queso” below and stay tuned for LIMBO, which drops Nov. 6.