A theory as to why the snotty misfit kids-- the ones the once-glorious indie empire would have, not so many years ago, claimed as staunch subjects-- are now defecting for the surprising country of underground hip-hop: it's the directness, stupid.

Have you noticed them missing? Sure, you have. The kids sneaking into grown-up rock shows are getting putzier and putzier, and the bands are getting older and older. Where once one could expect the rare, youthful outburst to transform itself into redemptive wonder, indie rock coolness is largely derived these days by relative oldsters. Meanwhile, underground hip-hop websites, fanzines and record stores are showing up left and right. How come They of Beats and Rhymes are getting the enthusiasm They of Cardigans and Uncertain Rhythms once enjoyed?

For a fairly detailed answer, look no further than Reflection Eternal, the new LP by Black Star stalwart Talib Kweli and DJ wunderkind Hi-Tek. The album's a good example of what's right with hip-hop lately and wrong with a lot of rock and roll.

Like his sometime groupmate Mos Def's Black on Both Sides (though with a substantive drop in articulation and a proportional increase in kneejerk argumentation), Talib Kweli's new joint is wry, reflective, principled and questing. Despite his occasional propensity for self-righteousness ("[I'm a] best-selling author writing great chapters in history"), Kweli is generally expressive and concerned, rather than hectoring and moralizing.

Because it lunges forth from NYC-based undergroundism, Kweli and Tek aren't particularly concerned with funkiness. Instead, Hi-Tek's beats thud and thwack steadily, possessing flow instead of heft, and reliability in lieu of inventiveness. Kweli uses the rhythm as a foundation, building rambling, baroque rhyme structures on top of them, exhibiting his cock-eyed "skills." This kind of braggadocio doesn't weaken the effort in the same way his moralizing self-canonization does, if only because he can often back those claims up.

Unlike a lot of present and future 12" soldiers, Kweli is full of things he wants to say. When he thanks his parents for not divorcing until their kids were older, it's a rending, astonishing moment; his praise for African-American women is a crowning moment for rap empathy. It's one of the few occasions where hip-hop has deigned strive for tenderness over all else.

Which brings me to the music's current ascendancy among the weird-teen set: Reflection Eternal includes, among its other virtues, an open description of its self-perceived place in the world. Where independent rock music has abandoned its own position as an aesthetically driven, non-dogmatic community of performer/audience equals for interesting, but ultimately non-communicative abstraction, hip-hop continues to build from the essential impetus for lasting, powerful art: "Hi, how are you? My name's..."

-Sam Eccleston