Conceptually, the idea of Brazilian hip-hop seems a hit or miss proposition. The country's musical heritage of bossa nova, samba and tropicalia is wondrous wealth of rhythmic influence, but bending it to meet the urbane sounds of hip-hop could be disastrous in the wrong hands, an Arrested Development–Putumayo hodgepodge of the worst proportions.

But that's the chosen path of Rio de Janero's A Filial on their debut, $1,99. The group takes several flavors of their native music, old-school hip-hop beats, and juxtaposes rhymes in both Portuguese and English. (MC Ben Lamar grew up in Chicago.)

It's hard to tell, though, if the album's better than it could have been or worse than it should have been. Either way, it's decidedly varied in its end results, effortlessly pulling together pieces from the group's multi-culti bag of tricks one moment, and struggling for cohesion—or at least not to sound corny—the next. "Calma Pedro" takes a big bass beat and underscores it with a tribal rhythms, successfully coming off like Run DMC had they come from a favela instead of Queens. Equally successful, "Brown Suéter" pours together samba, jazzy horns and crackin' beats in one fluid stream. But mimicking the Fat Boys while rapping about ending world hunger is a bad combination. And "Like a Baby's Kiss" is a Giant mis-Step of bossa nova croon and hokey rap. Give A Filial credit for taking the plunge, even if they aren't capable of making a splash.

--Stephen Slaybaugh