Where the ´60s had a fair amount of great blue-eyed soul, the 1990s had been remiss in offering up first-rate, blue-eyed hip-hop--until Soul Coughing came along. Frontman M. Doughty shied away from the label, dubbing the quartet´s music "deep slacker jazz," which actually kinda fits tracks like the film noir homage, "Screenwriter´s Blues." Doughty´s acerbic, often hilarious (see "Casiotone Nation") rhymes--which never sound like he´s trying to be too streetwise--float like butterflies over the sting-like-a-bee rhythm section of Sebastian Steinberg and Yuval Gabay. Add the unorthodox sampler technique of Mark de Gli Antoni, and you have a total package that you´ll never tire of unwrapping.