About two thirds of the way through Waitin' to Inhale, the fourth solo album from Houston rapper and perennial underdog Devin the Dude, there's a deeply troubling and perplexing song called "Just Because". Lyrically, "Just Because" isn't far from Eminem's deranged wife-murder fantasy "Kim"; Devin raps to an ex-lover about all the various ways he wants to humiliate, torture, or kill her. Musically, though, it couldn't be further from Eminem's ominous crashes. Instead, it's a weird parody of dentists'-office adult-contempo, with sterile Kenny G sax-runs and glistening Richard Marx pianos. Devin raps all his graphic revenge scenarios in a sort of stoned mumble, something akin to the sensitive-thug coo LL Cool J used on "I Need Love": "Get a hotel suite 20 stories above/ And chuck you out the window, watch you fly like a dove." It's a hate song disguised as a love song, and that thin joke doesn't make it any more defensible.

And yet I still want to give Devin the benefit of the doubt. Over his three uniformly great previous albums, Devin has crafted one of the most likeable personas in rap, an unremittingly decent and dependably funny everyloser, rapping about his broken-down vintage Cadillac and his struggles to pay his bills with a soothingly melodic drawl and a wicked instinct for self-deprecation. Devin croons his crass pickup lines over fluttery beds of warm, organic tracks that balance their heavy, shuddering 808s with pianos and flutes and acoustic guitars. The euphorically laid-back funk has a way of dissipating into the air, allowing Devin's sly jokes and forthright introspection to sneak up on you. Devin's no stranger to nasty sex-raps, but more often than not he's the butt of his own jokes or the hapless victim of his drawn-out story-songs. And even at his most reprehensible, he's been shockingly free of venom. He draws more from ribald storyteller comedians like Richard Pryor and Rudy Ray Moore than from any rapper, and it's hard to stay offended when he plainly refuses to take himself seriously.

But on Waitin' to Inhale, the punchlines come a lot less frequently, and so do his comeuppances. On older records, he might've let loose with a line like this one, from album opener "She Want That Money": "Bitch, you crazy; go wipe that cum out your nose/ Cuz you nothing but a money-hungry crumb-snatching ho"-- but he would've ended the song lying in a puddle of his own blood after the girl's brother paid him a visit. Now the other shoe never quite drops, and sometimes it should: On "Cutcha Up", he raps about wanting to fuck an underage girl. "Hope I Don't Get Sick-A-This" is a rough-sex memoir, something that would sound a whole lot natural coming from Lil Wayne or 8Ball or Redman. Those guys all have tough, commanding vocal presences; Devin delivers his lyrics in a calm, reasonable tone that somehow makes all his talk that much more disturbing.

On the evidence of a few later tracks, Waitin' to Inhale could be Devin's breakup album. "No Longer Needed Here" is a just-got-dumped lament, bitter but nuanced: "Go find that fountain of youth, that fantasy life/ Where you don't have to work on it to make it right." On "Don't Wanna Be Alone", Devin eschews rapping for singing, crooning needy girl-don't-leave-me stuff. Right next to each other, those two songs would add up to a powerful picture of romantic desperation, but "Just Because" comes right in between them and seriously compromises the effects of both. So maybe Devin is turning his personal anguish into angry music; he certainly wouldn't be the first. I'd prefer to think that his songs are more about misogyny than reflections of it. Devin's an avowed fan of 70s soft-rock, particularly James Taylor, and that guy certainly didn't blanch at portraying himself as an enormous asshole. Maybe Waitin' to Inhale finds John Updike's influence finally trickling down to Houston rap via Taylor, a development almost as potentially interesting as Lil Wayne's current sentimental-absurdist Kurt Vonnegut phase. But maybe I'm squirming around for excuses for Devin because I like him so much, so consider my recommendation to be a vote of confidence, but be prepared to get potentially grossed out if you delve into this album.

The number at the top of this page reflects a couple of other things, too: For one, this album is as musically pretty as anything Devin's ever done. The album unfolds as a beautiful whole, its miasmic funk relaxing into itself, never pushing too hard but never fading into the background completely either. And Devin still shows occasional evidence of the self-mocking spark he's always had; "She Useta Be" is a light, mellow track about a chance encounter with a girl who rejected him in high school: "A hundred and fifty pounds and ten years later/ Seen her at the grocery store; she tried to holler at a playa."

But the record's delirious peaks come when Devin leaves his own sexual frustration behind completely. "What a Job" is a warm and trenchant look at the absurdities in the career of a rapper, and it boasts the best Andre 3000 verse in years. And "Lil' Girl Gone" is a melodramatic lost-innocence number way prettier and more powerful than Ludacris's similarly themed "Runaway Love". Its weeping strings, cascading pianos and on-fire guest-verses by Lil Wayne and Bun B give the track a widescreen grandeur that the rest of the album coolly avoids, and its simple decency goes a long way toward making up for Devin's sins on the rest of the album. Why can't Devin be this good all the time?