Most white rappers play at being down, but Brad Nowell reveled in the glories of cultural confusion. The Long Beach surf rat skanked onto modern-rock radio with a Teva on one foot and a Doc Marten on the other, rapping — or was it busking? — about stealing a guitar in the L.A. riots and dealing with his mom’s crack habit. Sublime’s 1996 third album (finished just before Nowell died of a heroin OD and expanded here with demos and acoustic throwaways) had moments of straight reggae and punk, but the hey-whatever inclusiveness of songs like Rasta-fried folk-hop hit “What I Got” exuded casually utopian burnout warmth that lessers like Sugar Ray and Everlast would inexplicably pervert into doofy hard-guy poses, crossing from modern-rock into Top 40. Maybe Nowell was lucky he didn’t stick around to see life pass him by.

DOWNLOAD: “What I Got,” “April 29, 1992 (Miami)”