As effective as “Midnight Vultures” is at twiddling the stereotypes and conflating the musical, sexual and economic nuances of black and white culture, it can’t match the heft and agility of the doubleheader Paul has pitched at consumers this year. In February, he dropped “A Prince Among Thieves,” an acrid valentine to the chicanery of the hip-hop industry, conceived with the trenchant savvy of a longtime player who has fronted creatively adventurous, commercially sporadic crews such as Stetsasonic and De La Soul. Now, from out of left field, comes “So … How’s Your Girl,” a black comedy of manners inspired by an old sitcom episode starring unctuous wiseacre Chris Elliott, the former Letterman sidekick who, at his best, was Beck’s television equivalent.

Collaborating with Dan “the Automator” Nakamura (the mix-meister from Kool Keith’s Dr. Octagon record) and a goulash of guest stars ranging from DJ Shadow and Sadat X to Sean Lennon and Father Guido Sarducci, all working under the name Handsome Boy Modeling School, Paul has loosely structured his latest project around the theme of narcissism and ersatz class mobility. Critics have charged that the conceit doesn’t add up, as if, from “Sgt. Pepper’s” on down, narrative integrity has ever been the point of concept albums. The yoke here is, amid pompously goofy interludes about bum-rushing the aristocracy by grooming oneself well, that Paul has turned loose a motley posse whose only commonality is they’ve never given a fig about fitting in.

Thus Moloko’s Roisin croons, “You can’t hide from the truth/Because the truth is all there is,” over a lonely blues piano, followed by a electrifying turntablist rave-up from DJs Shadow and Quest titled “Holy Calamity,” which yields to Biz Markie, prompted by Paul, singing a snippet of the Bee Gees’ “Night Fever” over the phone, which yields in turn to a celebration of living in the projects from Dave of De La Soul and, in a blast from the early ’90s past, Del tha Funkee Homosapien. In the end, Elliott is sampled declaring, “I’m a male model/Not a male prostitute!” and Alec Empire and Company Flow’s EL-P weld the doors shut and detonate the control board on “Megaton B-Boy 2000.”

Few things are more susceptible to the vagaries of one’s taste than humorous social critique. Through my prism, Beck’s “Midnight Vultures” is an R-rated version of “Good Times” with an all-white cast, a reverse race card played as a joker. By contrast, “So … How’s Your Girl?” is like “Fawlty Towers” populated by a squadron of multi-culti bohos. Sign me up for modeling school.

As for the rest of the record, Korn uncorks its customary blend of mincing menace and depth-charge mayhem, while Limp Bizkit lays down a dance track so benign that the Laker Girls could shake their booties to it if a few profanities were bleeped out. And Rob Zombie’s “Superbeast” would make an ideal theme song on the monster-truck circuit.

So much for the cartoons. The specter of real violence is given disparate spins on minstrel-rapper Eminem’s send-up of teen suicide (“Bad Influence”) and Everlast’s “So Long,” a somber portrait of a Columbine-style classroom killer. Oddly enough, Eminem’s scabrous sarcasm actually makes his song feel like the more responsible of the pair. With lines like “They say I’m suicidal/Teenagers’ new recital — go ahead, get mad and do it!” and “You only live once/You might as well die now!” hip-hop’s court jester belittles the notion of snuffing oneself with a sense of irreverent alienation that a disaffected adolescent might appreciate.

By contrast, Everlast plays it straight, neither condemning nor condoning as he recounts details — the early exposure to guns, the merciless put-downs at school, the grim, unflinching retribution — that would be chilling if they weren’t so numbingly familiar. No one should expect answers from a pop song, but there’s precious little insight here either. Everlast supposedly composed the song before Columbine ever happened, which is all the more reason to reexamine the beguiling anti-heroism of lines like, “He felt so free/Like his destiny/Was linked to someone out on the horizon,” and the oft-repeated refrain, “Think I’m gonna die today/And everyone who hurt me is gonna pay.”

Having presciently stumbled upon a hot-button issue, Everlast either blindly decided to push it on an audience that might give new meaning to the phrase “target demographic” or he thinks “So Long” could be the sonic Prozac that provides succor for some bent, embittered kid. But it seems equally possible that the kid might think about emulating the protagonist in that Everlast song, the one Geffen thoughtfully sandwiched between tunes by Korn and a new group called Professional Murder Music. In what feels like a feeble attempt to put a fig leaf over their exposed behinds, the label honchos close out “End of Days” with a cautionary tale by the soggy grunge band Creed, featuring the lyrics, “Somebody told me the wrong way/I hope I helped you live.” Don’t we all.