Even if you don’t remember Arrested Development, chances are you remember at least a song or two from their 1992 release, 3 Years, 5 Months & 2 Days in the Life Of… Its bohemian hip-hop flare and positivity paved the way for hit radio singles in “Tennessee,” “Mr. Wendal,” and “People Everyday,” whose success tagged the collective as standard bearers for a more uplifting offshoot of the genre that followed in the footsteps of contemporaries like De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest. While the sound hearkened back to hip-hop’s nascent nascent spirit of playfulness and optimism, Arrested Development’s lyrics were decidedly intellectual. They dealt with race relations and the identity of modern black America at a time when the more fashionable (to say nothing of lucrative) option was to expound the newly sanctified gangsta approach.

In the years since In the Life of, few acts have successfully followed in the footsteps of Arrested Development’s homespun sound. Some acts, such as Nappy Roots, have embraced the group’s modest southern pride, but most rappers who felt aligned with the sentiment behind their music found their calling in the underground hip-hop scene where being clever and idiosyncratic was ballyhooed over being socially conscious. Now, over twelve years after their last domestic release of new material, Arrested Development has returned to the game without skipping a beat with the release of Since the Last Time.

Taking in these new tracks, the most surprising discovery for listeners will be how well the group manages to maintain the flavor of their 1990s releases while still sounding incredibly fresh. With its confident rapid-fire lyrics, sections of “Inner City” could easily have Arrested Development mistaken for their Atlanta followers OutKast, the main distinction being the more adventurous samples employed by the former. The comparison is equally valid on the blustery “Down & Dirty,” which can’t help but recall the torrid flows of “B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad).”

Those passing resemblances aside, there is plenty on Since the Last Time which rings with Arrested Development’s unmistakably signature style. The opening title track has a jazzy, laid-back feel that immediately connects the band to the era of their greatest success. “Heaven” pulls in the female rhythm and blues vocals that underpinned so much of their early work and inspired a decade of hip-hop/R&B cross-over successes like Erykah Badu and Jill Scott. One of the trickiest tracks to pull off, the samba-meets-rap synthesis “Sao Paulo,” shows that there is little terrain the group can’t tread upon gracefully. It is a deftly layered, elegantly composed song and, more to the point, is also a quintessential Arrested Development tune; one would be hard pressed to think of any other hip-hop troupe that can pull off a song like this.

Since the Last Time would be a superlative debut for any group, but the fact that it represents a comeback makes it all the more impressive. Arrested Development have crafted a record that is a counterargument to all of the criticisms detractors have about hip-hop music–that it is vainglorious, demeaning, needlessly obscene, trite, or otherwise uninspired. In place of those slams, they deliver music that is as entertaining as it is stimulating.

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