As the conflict of whether the shop will shut down or not looms in the background—like how it does in Barbershop—Cooper and Tramayne barrel through edgy conversations on political correctness, good cops and bad cops, and what makes someone Black. Usually the joke is in racial puns (“Nigga-lodeon,” “Nigga Ball Z,” “Arnold Schwarz-nigga”) or the differences in the ways Cooper and Tramayne present their Blackness despite being family: Cooper is white-passing, dresses in a flannel and glasses, and is insecure about dropping “nigga” as often as he does; Tramayne, in contrast, is lightskinned but visibly Black, in a T-shirt with Martin Luther King Jr. rocking grillz, an untied purple durag, a denim jacket with Pan-African patches, and a way of speaking that includes more “nigga”s than that one Rich Homie Quan hook.

Elsewhere, Paradise Records runs through a series of wannabe Chappelle’s Show skits with a mumblecore spirit, including a dance number set to Project Pat’s “If You Ain’t From My Hood,” buying weed off Jay and Silent Bob in a scene shot in black and white to pay direct homage to Clerks, and Logic getting his Mike Myers on by transforming into Cooper’s Uncle Tony, an elderly player and hustler in financial trouble with the neighborhood wise guys. Logic can’t settle on what type of comedy he wants to make. It doesn’t help that he isn’t very funny. Paradise Records is sometimes a slacker comedy fitted around long, awkward conversations. Sometimes it’s a stoner comedy full of hijinks. Sometimes it’s in the lineage of the stripped-down Judd Apatow improv comedies that let actors fire off-the-dome jokes and get off their bits and impressions. Logic’s impressions, believe it or not, are of Rocky Balboa and Mr. Burns. Timely stuff.

It’s not all bad, I guess. There are fine cameos from Juicy J and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The vinyl shop looks a little too clean and corporate for a guy with massive money issues, but the walls lined with music and movie posters give it some warmth. (Ones for Akira, Flight of the Concords, Wiz Khalifa, Fall Out Boy, Dilla, The Last of Us, and Elton John stand out.) And I laughed when Logic made room for his real-life, Schoolly D–quoting dad to talk shit and get high. Paradise Records is not so bad when it’s almost as nerdy and personal as his music can be.

That could be what drew Logic to the movies of Kevin Smith, especially the ’90s favorites that veer off into minutes-long diatribes about Star Wars or Marvel comics. As he drifts further from what is considered hot in rap—he was once upon a time a 2013 XXL Freshman—he seems to be burrowing deeper into his own interests and underlining that he is a real person in a hip-hop ecosystem full of cartoon characters. “I’ve been on a run of doing, like, super hip-hop music and that shit doesn’t pay the bills at all,” Logic said to TMZ last year, both sincere and trolling. “I’ve been blessed enough…to make music from my heart, but, next year, I’m gon’ fuck ’em up, I’m ’bout to drop all this, like, Playboi Carti, trap, turn-up shit. Go get a bag and have fun.” His half-committed critique aside, he makes it clear that he’s on a mission to make art that prioritizes the depth and humanity of an artist over trends.