THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD

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David Banner might as well be two different rappers on “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” his fourth album.

One is the community-minded striver who frames the album with “So Long,” which lashes out at his generation for attacking one another instead of uniting against injustice, and “Faith,” where he prizes a woman’s advice to “Let them boys know you smart/ Stand up for the poor, keep God in your heart.”

Partway through the album, he complains that Southern rappers “subliminally became what they think we are anyway,” letting themselves be stereotyped as T-shirt-wearing, gold-toothed and “dumb.” But by then the other David Banner has already appeared. For some of the catchiest tracks, he and his guests — among them Akon, Snoop Dogg, Lil Wayne, UGK, Chris Brown and Chamillionaire — embrace the same stereotypes.

Banner has been having it both ways since his first solo album, “Mississippi: The Album” (2003), which argued that poverty makes decent people do crude, desperate things. He bridges his two selves with a delivery so brusque and aggressive that it verges on belligerence no matter what he’s rhyming about.

But much of “The Greatest Story Ever Told” might as well be running down a familiar checklist — guns, rough sex, big cars, club brawls, anti-snitching — and Banner is running out of variations. If he’s really worried about the dumbing down of hip-hop, he could start by changing his own songs.

— Jon Pareles,

The New York Times