Seriously, now: Does anything get old faster than socially-conscious pop? The optimistic folk acts of the ‘60s had a shorter route from sensations to punchlines than even the Archies. “Conscious reggae” was only cool for a few years in the ‘90s, and that was in Jamaica, where the climate and foliage kind of lend themselves to mind-opening optimism.

But probably no group showcased the limited rewards of spirituality and awareness better than Arrested Development. The southern hip-hop collective hit huge in 1992 with 3 Years, 5 Months & 2 Days in the Life Of…, selling four million albums and racking up awards. Two years later, they released a flop sophomore LP (Zingalamaduni) and began to come apart. When they broke up in 1996, head rapper Speech launched a solo career which, because of integrity, or perhaps a death wish, pursued all the same positive, back-to-our-roots themes that had stranded his band.

In some ways The Vagabond, Speech’s fourth solo album, sounds like what Arrested Development would be making if socially-conscious rap had hit and they’d stuck around. (They did reunite in 2000, but does touring Japan and winning NBC’s Hit Me Baby One More Time constitute “sticking around?”) Opener “Braided Hair” grafts a sweet guitar sample onto rhymes that compare hairdressing to living life: “Three strands twist together / Ultimately you get to where you want to get to”. It would fit into the audio rotation at Starbucks, but you could say the same for “Tennessee” or “Mr. Wendel” if they dropped today. The middle stretch of the album, from “Walking in the Sun” to “What You Give”, slaps together four catchy hip-hop songs with sunny, spiritual lyrics and very different instrumental hooks. “Walking in the Sun” gets the formula just right—repetitive harp and keyboard riffs roll along as Speech rhapsodizes his marriage with lines like “God has made us become one”.

All that said, these songs make it clear why socially-conscious hip-hop didn’t take over the world. They’re all very content, with no palpable daring or edge. Instead of furiously writing rhymes on a pad, you imagine Speech writing these songs after a long spell in the hammock, maybe putting a bookmark in his Cornel West essay, maybe balancing a glass of wine.

Compounding that problem, he only fills half of the album with hip-hop songs. The rest are pastiches of different rock, R&B, and jazz styles, which sound a lot like the work of other, better artists. The worst offender is a drum-and-trumpet-heavy cover of “Across the Universe”, easily the least exciting John Lennon song Speech could have tackled (I’d rate this a 10 if he did “Meat City”). “Shine” and “No One Like You” sound like post-Gold Experience, pre-Musicology (i.e. lousy) Prince, and “Love” is cleaned-up R. Kelly. Speech’s singing voice is actually quite strong, but he doesn’t manage to make any of these songs cross over from “interesting” to “catchy” or “actually pretty good”.

It would be cruel to pile on and keep talking about how Speech’s brand of hip-hop and R&B sounds like it could be played in corporate coffee chains. But imagine you’re at Caribou Coffee. This is the sort of music—pleasant, inoffensive, strangely nostalgic—that you won’t mind hearing piped over the sound system.