When Noname (fka Noname Gypsy) raps, she swims in the bleakness of a life that’s seen a lot of death and change. “I used to have a name that look like butterflies and Hennessy/ I’ll trade it up for happiness but joyful don’t remember me,” she remembers matter-of-factly on “Sunny Duet,” from her new project Telefone. But even while reliving heartbreak her voice is soothing—resigned but optimistic, weary but hopeful. Perhaps it is a credit to all of her years spent writing and performing poetry as part of the YOUmedia Program for Young Creatives at Chicago’s Harold Washington Library: Her skipping cadence and ability to dance around words while establishing that each one is equally important are poet's skills, making you listen to every word without ever seeming overdetermined or obvious. You’re just gripped, trying to catch everything coming at you—and Noname (real name Fatimah Warner) gives you a lot.

On Telefone, she pours all the joy and devastation we glimpsed in her various guest spots with artists like Chance, Mick Jenkins, and Saba into a rich, somber, and incredibly intimate album. Originally meant to be released last summer, *Telefone *has been a long time coming for those who first heard her crushing, heartache-filled verse on Chance the Rapper’s “Lost” from Acid Rap, but the wait was worth it. Centered around transformative telephone conversations she’s had as she’s grown up, Telefone presents an introvert’s path to adulthood in careful detail and emotional intelligence.

If the Charlie Brown Christmas special—with its poignancy, melancholy and childlike, funereal score—were turned into a rap album, it might sound like Telefone. Much of its sound rests on delicate pianos, xylophones, and gentle wind instruments, matching the gorgeousness and dreary tenor of the lyrics. In much the same way as Jamila Woods’ HEAVN, it is a gospel-informed album, suffused with the same hope borne out of grief.

Also like HEAVN, Telefone is very much an album about black pain, particularly black women’s pain. When she raps about her lack of confidence and belief in her dreams on “Reality Check” she speaks of her granny’s spirit telling her, “You know they whipped us niggas?” as a counter. On “Bye Bye Baby” she raps about abortion with gentleness and understanding, referring to a “play date up to heaven soon.” Throughout Telefone, she reflects on the trials of the mothers and grandmothers who’ve given so much to the same world that destroyed them. These black women’s stories, so often obscured or silenced, are presented on center stage here. The joys, the hope and the determination are all there as well as the pain and burdens; they’re not separate but instead move together, forming a balance. Along with its black femininity, Telefone is very much a Chicago rap album in this same sense, telling different sides of the same story Chance or Chief Keef tell; they’re all different patterns in the same quilt covering the violence, plight, and pain that a failed system and poverty has created.

Noname is not drowning in misery but instead staying afloat and assuring you that you can, too: “What a pretty lady in the valley of the shadows/I’m thinking she lost a battle/I’m thinking she found the bottle,” she raps on “Freedom Interlude,” before adding “I know this is a song for overcoming.” It’s inspiring and gripping, so much so that when she brings in others to rap—Raury on “Diddy Bop,” theMIND on “Sunny Duet”—you miss her. “Freedom Interlude” is bookended with a Nina Simone sample in which she talks about the meaning of freedom. Simone’s troubles are well-known, but one thing that was always obvious to those who saw her live is that no matter what was happening in her life, when she got on stage she felt truly free and alive. Telefone feels like that same freedom; dancing and floating righteously amid unrest.