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But with current top dog 50 Cent publicly pledging his support for Bush’s status quo in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Chuck D’s return to the hip hop fray could not come at a more welcome time.

Title aside, New Whirl Odor is a respectable addition to the P.E. catalogue but does little to halt their long-term decline. Lyrically, Chuck D is on fine form and finds no shortage of targets for his wrath, with the US government, the media and the war in Iraq all firmly within his sights, but musically the disc is uneven.

‘Bring That Beat Back’ and ‘Check What You’re Listening To’ find the group in vintage rabble-rousing mode but lack the apocalyptic rush that defined the classic early sound. Elsewhere attempts to map out fresh musical terrain bring mixed results. While the rock-rap of ‘What a Fool Believes’ somehow manages to capture the worst of both genres, the dubbed-out vibe of the introspective ‘Revolution’ is a genuine treat.

But it’s only on the closing ‘Superman’s Back In The Building’ that P.E. really offer a vision of what a hip hop group in its forties can achieve. An eleven minute-plus monster, the track builds slowly from a swampy guitar groove before flooring the listener with exultant horn blasts and jazzy bass runs. It might not get them back onto the MTV playlist, but it offers the cautious hope of a meaningful future for the band — once they stop trying to compete with their twenty-something selves and allow themselves to mature with style.