ean Price—formerly known as “Ruck,” one half of the on-again, off-again duo Heltah Skeltah—reintroduced himself to hip-hop audiences on 2005’s Monkey Barz as “The Brokest Rapper You Know.” Price used his first solo project to comment endlessly on his lack of success as a rapper…and a husband…and a father…and, well, as a human being in general. On Jesus Price Supastar, Price sounds like he’s been taking his own self-deprecation a little too seriously.

While Price and his Boot Camp Clik companions built their reputation on wild rhymes about ruckus-raising and dro-blazing in early-’90s Brooklyn, Price turned comedian on Monkey Barz. Rather than rely solely on snappy one-liners, he crafted song-length jokes: “Heartburn” played like a deviant “My Favorite Things,” including Price’s dual declaration of love for civil rights leaders and defunct sitcoms (Knots Landing and Falcon Crest, FYI); “Monkey Barz” turned ape imagery inside-out (“We Mighty Joe Young’in’ it / Thuggin’ it / Straight from the jungle, my brother / My niggas Banana Republican”); and “I Love You (Bitch)” offered a laundry list of his wife’s numerous flaws. For all its obvious hilarity, Price’s wise-cracking provided a window onto the “inner Sean,” a semi-tragic figure wracked by self-doubt and missed opportunities.

Unfortunately, the black humor that made Monkey Barz so compelling is largely missing from Jesus. While Price maintains his status as the Most Self-Reflexive Rapper You Know (“My shit raw dog like fuck rubbers / Motherfuck, lit-era-lly / I fuck mothers”), his elaborate jokes have been replaced by disjointed puns. Meanwhile, having plumbed the depths of his personal failure the last time ’round, he seems content to remind listeners that he once plumbed the depths of his personal failure and that he occasionally returns… just as long as his pilgrimage to their mossy confines doesn’t interfere with his daily duties of crack-selling and cracker-slapping. Where Monkey Barz was slightly nerdy, Jesus is unapologetically street.

Over the album’s sixteen tracks, Price wavers between moments of brilliance and spots of head-scratching laziness. Whereas his Heltah Skeltah partner Rock radiates constant intensity, Price smolders, flaring up occasionally (“Intro,” “Like You,” “King Kong”) only to subside into nonchalance (“Da God,” “Oops Upside Your Head,” “Stop”). When he arrives at “Sean is the best / Y’all niggas is the opposite,” he seems to have abandoned showing for straight-up telling—as if he were translating his metaphors on Monkey Barz into Standard English.

Despite its lyrical unevenness, Price’s performance on Jesus might have been tolerable with the right beats to back it up. Even when he’s unfocused, his characteristic way of building rhymes makes for an interesting listen. Price fits an even, metered cadence to his rumpled, half-unhinged street-corner psycho persona. Layering line on top of line with sly, squinty-eyed menace, he usually pauses for a brief snicker and a few expletives before launching into another slick sequence.

But Price himself admits that the airy mood of many of the album’s beats don’t fit his style. Half of the tracks come from 9th Wonder and Khrysis, marking Jesus Price as the latest product of an ongoing collaboration between Boot Camp and the Justus League, a North Carolina-based collective of rappers and beatmakers that nurtured underground darlings Little Brother. The rapport between the Camp and the League isn’t hard to understand: 9th and Khrysis very self-consciously attempt to recreate the layered, sample-heavy sound that dominated NYC hip-hop during the Camp’s prime. Despite its throwback hominess, Jesus Price is packed end-to-end with beats that not only have the same mood (plodding and soul-laced), but also have the same formal structure: a slightly muffled vocal sample, a loose ambient element, and a lock-step, dulled drum pattern. For all their apparent “layeredness,” the tracks are generally topographically flat—they have no flowing rhythms for the MCs to ride. For comparative purposes, note how different—and engaged—Price sounds on PF Cuttin’s “Intro,” Illmind’s “Cardiac,” and Tommy Tee’s synth-heavy “Church.”

Price is nice, no doubt. But Jesus Price is no miraculous revelation. Beats, rhymes…in all aspects, we could have used a little more, even from the man who’s built a tidy following from selling himself short.