Lil’ Brian has always been an enigma in zydeco with his too funky-for-zydeco and too-zydeco-for-funk approach. On his fourth album (first in seven years), he continues to position himself to be a “contenda” in the more lucrative urban music spectrum, which explains why “Zydeco” was dropped from his band’s name, now known simply as the Travelers.

Yet, for being such a hybrid, Lil’ Brian’s music probably has more appeal to the non-zydeco, non-rap and non-hip-hop hardcore contingent. Several songs, like the reggae-thrusting title track and “Bounce” find Lil’ Brian surfing some fairly killer grooves that are only put to bed once the tunes fade out. One in particular, “Funky Feel’in,” has so much in-your-face funk, it’s as if the Ohio Players were in the studio slamming it down with the Lil’ B gang. Besides tight musicianship, hook-filled arrangements and a crystal clear mix, what’s also fun is how he keeps it loose with frequent laughter and dubbed-in conversations that actually help shape his musical persona for first-time listeners. What doesn’t work is Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff,” which breaks the flow.

Still, no matter how hard Lil’ Brian tries, there’s only so much you can change. Sure, it’s all a blatant marketing ploy to take zydeco and whatever else that’s in it to the masses. But the truth of the matter is that Lil’ Brian still plays accordion, hardly a cutting-edge staple of funk and hip-hop, and still hangs his hat in rural Barrett Station, Texas, a historic Creole settlement, rather than the nearby concrete jungles of Houston. His core base is and always will be zydeco and occasionally he doesn’t sound too far from playing a Catholic hall dance (“Ducema”). He gives Rockin’ Sidney’s “Good for the Goose, Good for the Gander” a much needed facelift and lashes out at the critics who say he can’t play zydeco on “You Talk About Me.” The latter is a stitch in itself, yeah, he plays zydeco all right, cranking out the same one-chord vamp throughout the entire 4:23. Is that what you really want?