ACE HOOD

“Trials & Tribulations”

(We the Best/Cash Money/Universal Republic)

There’s been no greater act of hip-hop bandwagoneering this year than Ace Hood’s “Bugatti.” It’s a surge of triumphalism from a rapper who doesn’t appear to have earned it, but what carries the song is the hook, by Future, which sounds as if it were melting out of the speakers, in that characteristic Future way. This isn’t Future at his most creative, but the digitally decaying voice is there — it’s a gift, and it does the work so that Ace Hood doesn’t have to.

The result is Ace Hood’s biggest hit in a five-year career, and what does he do with the currency that a success of this scale has earned him? Unexpectedly, he makes the most socially conscious mainstream rap album of the year thus far.

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Granted, this is a preposterously low bar in 2013. The end-zone dance that is “Bugatti” is far more in keeping with hip-hop’s prevailing mood, and half of this album tries to match it but falls short. But most of the rest of “Trials & Tribulations” is far darker and more reflective — it’s music for bad moods and self-doubt. Turns out that Ace Hood is obsessed with poverty, redemption, broken families, religiosity, Trayvon Martin and Emmett Till. Plenty of rappers give lip service to the same things but usually as a means to celebrating overcoming long odds. On songs like “Another Statistic,” “Hope” and “The Come Up,” Ace Hood sounds happy to be mired in the difficult stuff. They sound as if they were teleported in from the early 1990s, when there wasn’t shame in struggle.

But while Ace Hood is occasionally a nimble rapper, he’s rarely an effective one. He raps quickly in a thick, gluey voice, with little tonal variance, like endlessly striking one key on the piano. This is his fourth album, a milestone many better rappers haven’t reached, but he has the blessing of powerful benefactors: DJ Khaled, to whose label he is signed, and now the Cash Money cartel, including Birdman and Lil Wayne.

Perhaps without that baggage he’d be received as a more complex figure, something other than a mere minor leaguer looking to graduate to the bigs. But it’s only that baggage that’s gotten him this far. After all, all moguls need charitable write-offs. JON CARAMANICA