Two geeky hip-hop siblings who left New Orleans after Katrina and wound up in Los Angeles, the Knux draw their sound from astonishingly diverse precedents: OutKast and De La Soul, obviously, but also Fishbone, the Cars, Prince's Controversy, the Prodigy's big beats. What that hodgepodge adds up to is the year's best hip-hop debut.

The juxtapositions reveal a wit that runs decades deep. "Life in a...