Beginning his career fifteen years ago, Lewis Parker’s had enough time to release a couple of classic albums. Granted, his two gleaming beacon’s of success, his first album entitled Masquerades and Silhouettes was released a good many years before his masterful beat tape, Sniper Beats, was put out.

Of course, fans and listeners should be able to understand why it took almost half a decade to squeeze out two classics – it’s hard work and Parker’s been focused on a label to promote his own stuff while trying to calculate the best time to move on over from the UK to New Yawk.

Having finally made the trek across an ocean, Parker has gone and released The Puzzle (Episode One, the Big Game). The disc presents itself as an interesting step in this emcee and producer’s career for a number of reasons.

Having made it to a new country, the dusty stuffs that Parker was known to truck in seem to have been cleaned off and replaced by a spate of funky, ‘70s tracks. “Dirty Money,” while still more than a pleasant listen, finds Parker making use of some ‘70s jazz stuff that might have been in contention for use on Seasame Street at some point. It’s an interesting track, to say the least, with Parker hypothesizing that record industry money is a filthy as crime money. It all makes sense, but it’s all rendered in terms that will seem foreign to old tyme fans.

Hopefully, that doesn’t sound like a criticism, it’s not – the track, and most of this album, though, don’t sound all too related to the work that made Masquerades and Silhouettes such a stunning disc. There’s still an overt Wu Tang influence, but instead of focusing on those esoteric samples, Lewis finds the funk. The disc’s all good rap stuffs, but The Puzzle (Episode One, the Big Game) makes it clear that Parker moved to New Yawk to make it.

The emcee’s flow over the entirety of the album eschews his Britisher accent. And on “The Big Gamble” Parker even winds up sounding like a BK native at times. It might be his casual mention of George W. Bush even as the rapper talks about international concerns, but the entire work arrives as something of an attempt to become an American over night.

Hip hop is a business as much as it is a life style and way of life. And while the best entertainers in the industry are able to hide that fact, there are those that can’t quite wrangle enough of a smoke screen to do so.

Parker isn’t a hack by any stretch of the imagination. And his disc is better than the vast majority of stuff that’s getting attention right now. That being said, this disc stops just short of pandering to an American audience. Nothing over the course of The Puzzle is anything less than well put together, but the disc also serves to push Parker’s (one time) style to the back burner. It’s not a bummer, but those older, UK recorded efforts are gonna get another spin before The Puzzle gets repeat listens.