Though a good hip hop album can stand or crumble under anything from production to lyricism to track arrangement, the importance of character can’t be underestimated. What would The Blueprint be without Jay Z’s invincible sneer? While he’s about the furthest thing from a gangster someone can be while still remaining human, Edmonton’s Joe “The Joe” Gurba understands the importance of character in hip hop, and his most recent album, Ut Oh, is a good demonstration of just how far a little personality can stretch.

Musically, Ut Oh is uneven. Though the album gets off to a beautiful start with “You’re Cool,” a spare, witty, surprisingly moving screed on the pursuit of acceptance in bohemian culture, the limited production on the next handful of tracks works awkwardly with Joe’s otherwise delightfully warbling cadence. When the beats fill out around halfway through, so does the record around them, and all of The Joe’s sly commentary on hip hop as a genre, clever hooks and unconventional rhyme schemes are given the prominence they deserve. It’s here, too, that we start to get a sense of who Joe is. He’s openly, proudly Christian, cocky in an agreeably hip hop sort of way (though his confidence is more from the depth of his thought than the depth of his pockets) and a high school dropout with the vocabulary of an English PhD.

Track arrangement is ultimately Ut Oh’s biggest problem. It starts great, gets soft, comes back, then hits a musically competent but weirdly evangelical patch before finishing on a refreshingly lighthearted note. Still, there’s so much love and wit and audacity in it that the sloppy arrangements and uneven production almost don’t matter. While that unfortunately means Ut Oh probably won’t launch The Joe into Cadence Weapon-like pseudo-stardom, it’s still an excellent showcase of his unique voice and his potential.