It’s faintly ridiculous hearing Q-Tip shout “Reveille” during the track “Abstractionisms,” as if the wake-up bugle call was a Busta Rhymes guest spot. This isn’t the confident emcee on the comeback in last year’s hit The Renaissance. This isn’t the slick up-and-comer running with Tribe Called Quest. Kamaal the Abstract is Q-Tip at his most passive, doodling grooves and kicking against every pop instinct or hook passing him by.

The tracks on Kamaal aren’t so much as songs as they are jam sessions between Q-tip and jazz musicians that the emcee obviously reveres. So much so, actually, that he seems to be a passing presence on his own album. His jazz collaborators, including Gary Thomas and Kurt Rosenwinkle, dictate the flow even if it goes nowhere, and outside of tracks like “Blue Girl” and “Even If It So” that’s exactly where it goes. Q-Tip seems to spend most of “Abstractionism” working around Kenny Garrett’s saxophone rather than making it integral to the song.

Throughout the album, elements bump into each other yet seem distinctly separate; Q-Tip’s usual grace for fusing jazz and hip hop into head-buzzin’ hooks get entangled in genre lines. Since Artisa/BMG shelved the album in 2001, the legend surrounding it has only swelled. Yet following the enthralling The Renaissance, Kamaal the Abstract reveals itself to be an inattentive bout of experimentation in the career of an emcee who figured it out later.