Animation offers the freedom to escape the self, to explore one’s contours from the outside. Last year, across three EPs—tobi lou and the Moon, tobi lou and the Loop, and tobi lou and the Juice—the Chicago-raised, LA-based rapper tobi lou strove to inhabit an animated universe. Each release featured a cartoon version of lou on its cover. He wrote songs inspired by the fantasy series Adventure Time and Sailor Moon. Even the glittery plastic stars lou often wears at the corners of his eyes seem like remnants of a cartoon alter-ego transferred into the real world.

On his debut album Live on Ice, lou’s suspended reality manifests in songs about feeling caught in the middle: between youth and maturity, playfulness and sincerity, confidence and anxiety. He works from a toolkit of synthetic, ringing tones whose constancy counters the album’s unwieldy length. But across 21 tracks tinged with the diaristic influence of SoundCloud rap, his wavering sometimes devolves into ambivalence. When the occasional string swell or slow guitar strum emerges, the combination suggests pause music, the kind a video game avatar idles to while the player is away.

But the ambient instrumentation can work when paired with lou’s stream-of-consciousness flows. On “I Was Sad Last Night I’m OK Now,” he repeats the titular lyric and asks: “You ever been so hungry you just lay down?/You ain’t even eat, you just went to sleep, just so you could dream about some takeout?” Times may be lean now, but lou’s twinkling synths and conversational delivery are a simple lesson in feeling better tomorrow. There are several such moments when he allows listeners to see past the fantasy and into his real world. On “That Old Nu-Nu,” he confides, “I’m told that my mother hates rappers,” before addressing his mother directly: “Mama, I hope this isn’t too rapper-ish.” It’s a playful moment with an aura of real significance: He just wants to make his mom proud.

Most of the time, though, lou sounds far more unsure of his abilities. On opener “100 Degrees,” he wonders: “I don’t know if it’s really me talking or if it’s just a ventriloquist.” Later, on “Berlin/Westside,” he promises, “I’m still me, just rearranged.” In spite of his self-awareness, Live on Ice frequently lingers on the wrong side of the line between tongue-in-cheek and cheesy. “Humpty Dumpty” aims for OutKast’s quirky panache and lands on bad egg puns; “Like My Mom” strikes an uncomfortable balance between adoring and overzealous. Narrating a romantic rejection, lou sings: “She tried to call me ugly, but she just sounded dumb/’Cause goddamn, I look good like my mom.” The album is weakest when he fails to laugh at himself.

“Orange Reprise” splits the difference between sincerity and corniness. When the track begins, lou is struggling to ward off sadness, rapping about feeling “insubstantial” and changed for the worse (“Why’d I stop rockin’ flannels?”). Framed as a tribute to Frank Ocean’s genre-defying power, “Orange Reprise” has grand aspirations. But then comes a slide whistle solo, and an outro that sounds like a Wii theme music version of “Pure Imagination,” from the Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory soundtrack. When tobi lou manages to make the two styles coalesce, they complement each other well. When he can’t, the fantasy seems out of reach.