Understand this before you listen to Boomerang: unless you speak very good French (and Senegalese French at that) and Wolof (one of the native languages of Senegal), chances are you won't understand a word Daara J say. N'Dango D, Aladji Man and Faada Freddy not only have an incredibly fast flow to their rhymes -- they also rap about social activism and Senegalese politics, topics that require thorough comprehension of the language if you expect to understand Daara J.

Without that knowledge (or a lyric sheet, which, unfortunately, neither the trio nor their label have provided), appreciation of Boomerang is essentially limited to a purely aesthetic level. Luckily for Daara J, they succeed quite neatly on that score as well; they've assembled an album that deftly mixes a wide variety of hip-hop styles. The album-opening title track, for example, seethes with the sort of fury that characterizes any good political agit-rap: the laid-back beat is completely at odds with the blistering, machine-gun rap it backs. By contrast, "Bopp sa Bopp" has the sort of stuttering rhymes and beats that people tend to associate with Busta Rhymes, while "Paris Dakar" has a lighter, almost Caribbean feel. A strong R&B influence runs through "Hip-Hop Civilization", due largely to the presence of female vocalist China, along with the sample from Kurtis Blow's "If I Ruled The World", and "Number One" is powered by a groove and a sample that, language notwithstanding, most definitely came out of the same genetic pool as reggae. In fact, if you listen closely enough you may even hear echoes of crunk in "Babylone".

It seems silly to judge a rap album not by the content of its lyrics, but by the backing beats and by how well the rappers deliver their rhymes. Hip-hop is, after all, a genre based entirely on words, and when you can't understand those words, you're missing the most vital component of the music. However, as Daara J show throughout Boomerang, it's possible to get the meaning of those words just by listening to the things that surround them -- the intensity of the rappers' delivery, the quality of the beats, and how well all those other factors coalesce around the words. And on that score, Daara J's message comes through loud and clear.