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Blackalicious - Nia

Four and a half stars

After a long dry spell, vital and inventive hip hop has seen quite a renaissance in the past year. A slew of releases from both new and experienced artists have reestablished a place for nonviolence and artistic ambition in the genre.

Establishing a niche for itself, something like what early De La Soul was supposed to be, on its debut LP, Blackalicious emerges as a group of blissful bohemians, devoted to artistic advancement instead of "the Benjamins."

Nia, which means "purpose" in Swahili, is full of great beats, courtesy of DJ Xcel. The album has a feel similar to classic soul albums, like a modern-day Marvin Gaye. The music is meditative and ultimately optimistic and filled with a joy and vibrancy not often seen in hip hop.

Rapper the Gift of Gab is a brilliant emcee, with atypical rhymes delivered with odd meters, while staying viscerally propulsive.

He especially impresses on "A to G," where he delivers stunning alliterative wordplay without the track sounding like a lexical exercise. The track finishes with a sampling collage compiling 13 MCs boasting their possession of the "gift of gab." The track is a truly remarkable achievement, both technically and musically.

Sounding paradoxically timeless and groundbreaking, Nia is the sort of album that isn't bought by huge numbers of people, but may be greatly influential. It's a complex album, and utterly essential.