Back in the early 2000s, during what’s possibly the last great movement in “underground” hip-hop, the Definitive Jux label was the “it girl.” The brainchild of former Company Flow member El-P, it was home to arguably one of the most acclaimed rosters of the time. The release that kicked it all off was Boston emcee Mr. Lif’s debut EP, Enter the Colossus. Lif went on to release another EP and two more albums before Def Jux shut its doors.

If you had to point to one thing that summed up the aesthetic of Def Jux, it would be lyrical intricacy (with a touch of musical abstraction). It was easy to see why Mr. Lif was chosen to make the label’s debut. His first full-length, I Phantom, was a concept record about everyday life as the world slumped towards the apocalypse. Lif managed to lay down a serious narrative without being heavy-handed. This concept of a thematically unified album is something that has been a constant in his career and something that has continued with his latest album, Don’t Look Down (Mello Music Group).

Mr. Lif’s first solo album in seven years, Don’t Look Down focuses on a character that steps up to protect his girlfriend from a stalker and the emotional and psychological aftermath of his actions. The album drops you right in the middle of the narrative with the two opening tracks, “Pounds of Pressure” and “The Abyss,” setting the stage with a play-by-play. The two cuts are as straightforward as the narrative gets, as from that point things get murkier. Lif seems to abandon the story for a solid chunk of the album, and the shift from the concrete to the abstract makes one question whether there is the same narrator throughout the record or if the idea of Don’t Look Down as a concept album is a bit overstated. Out of the 10 tracks, about half are connected to the story while the rest seem to stem from a different idea altogether. Part of the problem is that some songs seem to be less Mr. Lif speaking as the first person narrator and more as himself. Further complicating things is that the album is so sonically unified it makes it seem like everything is connected.

While Don’t Look Down may stumble as a cohesive narrative, Lif is still as sharp as he has ever been lyrically. One noticeable difference is that he’s wrangled his impulse to fit 16-syllable words into four-syllable slots. “Mission Accomplished,” his reunion with his Perceptionists partners Akrobatik and DJ Fakts One, shows how his lyrical dexterity on some rappity-rap stuff doesn’t need to rely on bludgeoning the listener with words or concepts when just clever wordplay will do. His interplay with guests like Del The Funky Homosapien (“World Renowned”) and Blacastan (“Whizdom”) highlights his adaptability, and it’s very likely that, in Lif’s conception of the album, these songs are key links in the story. For the casual listener, though, they’re just dope hip-hop songs, and the record doesn’t punish you if you lose the plot. The beats bang, so with the exception of the opening tracks, you don’t need to get it to dig it. Story wise, Don’t Look Down could be edited to an EP, but as a showcase of the continued excellence of Mr. Lif, it succeeds wildly.