Dudley Perkins

For his first solo outing in four years, Dudley Perkins has emerged with yet another alter ego: Dr. Stokley. If his vocal approach hasn't changed much since 2009's Holy Smokes, his self-proclaimed "Malcolm X-meets-Cheech and Chong" funk aesthetic is still a potent one. Collaborating again with wife Georgia Anne Muldrow (who handles production duties on all but three tracks), the concept behind Dr. Stokley is ostensibly about the holistic healing powers of music. But whatever you may think of the idea, Perkins delivers some of the strongest tracks of his career thus far. The idiosyncratic skits that cluttered previous albums are gone. In its place is a new sense of urgency and maturity, with tracks like the cautionary "Episode" detailing the oft-told consequences of inner-city violence over a sparse, haunting electro-funk bounce, while the deceptively languid "Headaches" name checks KRS-One's "Sound of da Police" with its indictment of African-American lawmen who brutalize their own community, asking: "How do you protect and serve when you don't even love them?" Of course, there's an ode to weed with the hilariously blunted "Lung Specialist."