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7.7 A little more than a decade after ''Deadringer'' came out, there's enough music and enough attempts at reconfiguring his style to help you construct a picture of how all over the map RJD2's career has been. Whether it's a clear picture is another thing entirely; his shift from underground rap production next big thing to muddled indie-pop singer-songwriter to studio-bound funkateer has done a lot to confuse any set-in-stone ideas of what the RJD2 sound was or is supposed to be. His partnership with Aaron Livingston as Icebird seemed like a good first step towards a reconciliation of everything RJ had built up in his portfolio over the previous ten years or so. But it also opened the door for a big ''now what?'' and the hesitant anticipation of future work that could build on the idea of an all-encompassing, canonical RJD2 musical identity. And now, for what feels like the first time in his career, RJ has released an album that comes across as a successful culmination of all his previous ideas and experiments rather than simply a new shift in style.. The title of ''More Is Than Isn't'' says as much; these are established trademarks and tics bombastic drum breaks, sunshine-gleam brass, an armada of mothership synthesizers that definitely sound like they came from the same hands that ''Deadringer'', ''Since We Last Spoke'' and ''The Colossus'' did. With this album uniting everything that made RJ RJ over the years, it establishes a definitive place for him after all this time: that of the hip-hop-inflected neo-soul fusionist producer who is just as comfortable working in moods as genres. With his instrumentals, it's as though he's working more in potential-soundtrack mode than anything; it's easier to describe his beats nowadays for what montages or scenes they could evoke rather than where their component parts could place them demographically. You can definitely dance to a lot of it: the Isley-flecked groove of ''Behold, Numbers!'' extends this summer's disco-funk revivalism into early fall, ''Winter Isn't Coming'' goes all neon-space-pyramid with high-BPM footwork-jostling bongo breaks, and the Rick Rubin-oid, Mellotron/piano/space-laser breakdown showcase ''Her Majesty's Socialist Request'' has already proven through its video to be a killer b-boy/b-girl anthem. The vocal cuts are both a bit less frequent and a fair amount stronger than in his last couple records. There are a couple strong rap tracks, with emerging Columbus art-rapper P. Blackk rolling out fluid doubletime boasts over the Southern bounce-style ''Bathwater'' and old Soul Position partner Blueprint harnessing some of that vintage ''Final Frontier'' smoothness into nimble heist-metaphor storytelling for the Meters-go-caper-flick soul twang of ''It All Came to Me in a Dream''. And while RJ does lend that hesitant falsetto of his to one of the tracks the twee, contemplative ''Dirty Hands,'' where he actually fits well amongst the beatless chimes and strings he largely leaves the vocals to R&B singers who can do his heavy-breaks production justice, like Icebird collaborator Aaron Livingston (''Love and Go'') or Little Brother's Phonte Coleman (doing a more straightfaced and affecting version of his Percy Miracles loverman schtick on ''Temperamental''). It peaks on ''See You Leave,'' a cut featuring Roots-affiliated rapper STS and singer/writer Khari Mateen, that's as buttery as it gets; on an album that fits right in with R&B and hip-hop's free-for-all cross-genre fusion it's good to hear that RJ can build trad-soul beats with the best of them. --Pitchfork
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