"I like the idea that America has a better image throughout the world," says the Boston-born, Fishtown-based underground rapper, who performs at Johnny Brenda's on Monday in support of his new, ripped-from-the-headlines CD, I Heard It Today (Bloodbot Tactical Enterprises ***).

"But I can't just fall hook, line, and sinker for trusting the guy, so I had to express my cynicism in a constructive way," says Lif, whose hip-hop moniker rhymes with spliff, and whose given name is Jeff Haynes.

The dreadlocked, bespectacled, and highly respected emcee, sitting for an interview at the South by Southwest Music Festival in March, then drops a verse from his single, "Obama," released on Inauguration Day.

"Well you seem like a good brother, but I gotta wonder," he rhymes. "You're in D.C. with some of those who put us under / And I'm glad to have a man of your demeanor as a leader, but if the flick was Pulp Fic, you'd be The Cleaner. . . ."

The Cleaner, Quentin Tarantino fans will recall, was the Harvey Keitel character also known as Mr. Wolfe, who was brought in to tidy up a particularly bloody mess Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta made in the backseat of their car in Pulp Fiction.

For Lif - who began making noise on the Boston independent hip-hop scene with his Public Enemy-influenced political rap in the late 1990s, before love and affordable real estate brought him to Philadelphia with his girlfriend in 2005 - the metaphor perfectly suits Obama's task.

"What has happened in the world is like the bloodbath in the backseat," says Lif, a soft-spoken, impassioned guy who attended Colgate University in Upstate New York for two years before dropping out to pursue his hip-hop ambitions in Boston. He made his name working with producer Steve the Archaeologist before hooking up with the Definitive Jux label and alt-rap cohorts like El-P and Akrobatik.

His rhymes have always drawn on the "black CNN" paradigm espoused by Public Enemy's Chuck D., though Lif's 2006 Mo' Mega took a more personal approach. With I Heard It Today, however, Lif was motivated more than ever to document a tumultuous time in history.

"With the political climate, I couldn't resist," he says. Home from a tour, he turned on the TV on Sept. 15, just as Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch collapsed. He wrote "Welcome to the World" the next day and recorded a string of dense, verbally dexterous singles he released in the run-up to Election Day.

"I'm just talking about the state of anxiety and the world being in flux," he says. "I flew by the seat of my pants. I was talking to people who lost their homes or lost their jobs, and watching the news, and making the songs to order. Just cheffing it up. . . ."

"I just thought, we are living in an era that's so worth documenting," he says of songs like the populist "What About Us?" and "Hatred," which addresses black-on-black violence. "My challenge was to take the energy I was getting from that and pick topics that would be timeless."

I Heard It Today, on Lif's own label, is his first album since a tour-bus accident in December 2006 in which he and members of the Oakland agit-rap group the Coup tumbled into a 30-foot ravine east of San Diego. The bus burst into flames, and the rapper injured his hip and back. "It was a terrible night," he says. "All of our stuff burned up. It made the last few years very hard for me."

After a layoff, Lif, who also is a member of the alt-rap supergroup the Perceptionists, felt compelled to take a journalistic approach.

"I hope that what people get from my music is that it's a 'we' thing," he says. "I'm reaching out to people. It's like, 'Yo, give me some information, talk to me about your experiences and frustrations.' So then I can combine them with my own and put this [stuff] in a song that a great expanse of people can relate to. I just want to bring forth our voice, our collective voice. That's really what it's about for me."