Way below the precipice of hip-hop’s mainstream excesses you’ll find the underground, harbouring an esoteric rapper who conceals his vanity under a prone-to-rust mask: MF DOOM. He’ll most likely be accompanied, this time by Jneiro Jarel. Together they make JJ DOOM.

Dividing the mainstream and JJ DOOM’s underground abode requires a variant process of fractional distillation. Key to the Kuffs’ gritty, gloopy sound boils furthest from the pristineness of the mainstream. Though the latter is accused of a cleanness that oozes emptiness, the former is on the ever-so-slightly-CFC-ozone-layer-tugging end. A questionably-structured album but with some potent flashes of brilliance, Key to the Kuffs’ distillation process is a couple of degrees shy of completion.

To those who aren’t familiar, DOOM is a comic book villain curated by Daniel Dumile. “The super villain get kicked out your country and said to pledge allegiance six times monthly”. Together with this typically tuneful flow, theatrical skits and superimposed movie scenes, Key to the Kuffs is structured much like 2004′s MM…FOOD, JJ’s dark, cantankerous production pulling it together perfectly.

“Use your gun, boy”, shouts a stereotypically English voice in ‘Waterlogged’’s heavy but tentative production. Dumile’s hiding place in London for the past year has directly informed the album, albeit with a dated impression that seems to reference Nancy Mitford’s exposure of U and non- U English. Despite the outmoded feel, it is nevertheless appealing, and the dingy production is like the curious greyness of London’s murky end but in sonic form. The fittingly titled ‘Gov’ner’ also shows Dumile’s knack for fitting complex rhymes in songs that are tight, looping and hypnotic.

Key to the Kuffs isn’t sycophantic in its impression of English culture, but the best moments on the album are the thoughtful collaborations with British visionaries like Damon Albarn’s hazy addition to ‘Bite the Thong’ and Beth Gibbons’ woozy wales in ‘GMO’. Testament to JJ and DOOM’s separate careers thus far, they use authentic influences – artists that represent unmistakably British music, proficiently translating this aspect of their vision for the album so well that even DOOM’s referencing of My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding doesn’t feel lurid or off base.

But what hasn’t translated is an all-encompassing concept. Where MM…FOOD used delectable edibles to create a well-rounded, gapless notion, the themes on Key to the Kuffs are half-baked and full of holes. As quickly as you are placed in London, you hop onto a sound-wave and you’re somehow in an American setting that isn’t familiarly explained. DOOM has created this album with a bi-coastal vision, which the majority of his listeners won’t have. So along these miscommunicated lines his concept of a super-villain – who seems to be conducting his criminality in England but then maybe again in the USA – gets lost.

“And they called him ‘muppet’, which means a stupid ignorant person”. Said by an American voice in the closing track ‘Wash Your Hands’, this clearly sums of the great and weak points of Key to the Kuffs. Full of incredible atypical influences with perfectly matched production and Dumile’s never-faltering lyrical skills, athough the delivery is tight the concept is perhaps rather too taut, suggesting conceptually blinkered vision.