All the altmusic advocates who get their undies in a knot when the rap community doesn’t embrace acts like Beck and the Beastie Boys now have an opportunity to put their money where their racially observant mouths are. The opportunity comes with the long awaited release of Both Sides of the Brain by Del Tha Funkee Homosapienon on the Hieroglyphics label. Hieroglyphics is a collection of genre-bending, psychedelics-friendly artists including Prince Paul, Sean Ono Lennon and the Handsome Boy Modeling School. “Both Sides of the Brain” is certainly the most exciting hip-hop I’ve heard all year.

Del’s rapping style is 100 percent old school. His diction is clear, drifting off to exaggeration only for spare comic effect. Like the best of the early rappers, Del will amaze you with his speed and alacrity. Remember the days when it was near-impossible to rap along with a record without getting your tongue twisted? Del does and evokes this heady, early style tremendously.

But “Both Sides” is no nostalgia act. The beats are as advanced as technology will allow. Del definitely sits on the party end of the street, there is little gangsta posing here. This is not a RZA production, but the soundscape is as intricate. The funk is true to the basics, yet current in a Jamiroquai or TAFKAP vein.

Perhaps the inspiration is as obvious as the lyrics make it out. This is LSD-inspired rap, perhaps the first of its kind. Lyrical content, while at times brash (“wash yo’ ass” is the second track’s chorus) is centered around humor and celebration, though not in the huggy-crunchy De La Soul or Arrested Development style. Del is friendly, but in a Bart Simpson way.

Del is the first guy I’ve heard rhyme “calzones” with “Dow Jones.”

I’ll make a brash statement and say that Del probably does not “represent,” as it were, the usual black hip-hop demographic. Which makes his involvement with Hieroglyphics all the more appropriate. Del, by the way, is Ice Cube’s cousin. If you remember the ill-fated film Next Friday, Cube had a middle class cousin. Perhaps art reflected life on that one.

“BM’s” is a song of marijuana advocacy, filled with cogent arguments of the Dutch example. The punchline come when Del admits to being “under the influence” while creating the rhymes. It’s no surprise, as the track has a thick low-end line and lots of swirling, glittering organ (as well as a rickety coronet sample.) It’s very id-scratching, very hip.

The very next track is “Skull and Crossbones” a real live finger-pointing song about drunk driving. It isn’t preachy, and probably based on actual experience.

“Catch All Can” is the star, a dynamite, timeless hit in the Grandmaster Flash style. Again, the wink to the 80s isn’t ignorable, but the song’s virtue doesn’t rely on it. Further good-ol’-days moments on this fine album include odes to Chuck D. and Colecovision.

If this CD isn’t embraced warmly by college radio and kids in the NYU dorms, then it is undeniable that the success of Beck and the Beasties was due, on some very real level, to race. “Both Sides of the Brain” is damn funkier than “Midnite Vultures” and “Hello Nasty,” both of which sold a gazillion copies and represented some of the two artists’ less-than-perfect work.

Del will certainly need the fans, as “Phoney Phranchise” certainly hasn’t ingratiated him to the Wu-Tang Clan audience.