Paul Barman is a skinny, frumpily dressed Jewish guy with glasses, several days’ worth of stubble and an undergraduate degree in visual art from Brown University.

He’s also a rapper.

But when you hear the man’s music, his image starts to make sense. His sometimes off-rhythm lyrics are densely packed with internal rhymes, literary references, palindromes, double puns, political diatribes and a good helping of sex and fart humor.

Barman’s geeky subject matter and image contrast with a genre dominated by confident, street-smart types.

Some have accused him of being nothing more than a novelty act. Some say that the only thing you can learn from an MC Paul Barman song is that Paul Barman is a smart guy.

“There’s more going on than that,” Barman says. “I know it. I’ve read one review that said [my music] is too cerebral for anybody to enjoy, and I’ve read another review that said it won’t make you think, but it’s a damn good ride.”

Barman’s lyrics are responsible for these opposing viewpoints. It doesn’t get much more cerebral than the shout-out in “Bleeding Brain Grow” on the recent album Paullelujah!, his first LP: “Eve, Mika, RZA, Evil JD, Nasir is Osiris, and J-live, AZ, Rakim, Cormega, Cage, Mr. OC: I’m anomie. I, mon ami.”

And it definitely doesn’t get much more sophomoric than the cut “Burping and Farting,” on which Barman raps, “Gas burps from fast slurps and come back in blast / chirps through the esophagus / It smells like a sarcophagus.”

Barman says he often constructs songs using isolated rhymes he discovers at the oddest of times.

“Well, it used to be just trying to think of the illest rhymes that I possibly could,” he says. “For example, I was bagging change the other night, and while I was walking to the bank to get more penny papers, I thought of ‘My pickle pole was harder than a nickel roll.’”

But these days, Barman is less likely to let rhyme dictate content. Amid the rapid-fire wordplay and locker-room humor on Paullelujah!, he speaks extensively of political issues, a topic he currently calls his “highest interest.”

But some listeners are hesitant to take Barman’s politics seriously. On Paullelujah!, “Anarchist Bookstore Part 1,” where he asks “Will Barnes & Noble harm the global? / Will Amazon com be ’round when grandma’s gone mom?,” is followed by “Burping and Farting.”

Even within the political songs themselves, Barman uses over-the-top rhymes, silly similes and character voices.

“Anyone who would object to an element of humor in the midst of something serious better be reading heavy-duty theory and nothing else,” Barman says. “If anything, I think I’ve made a mistake by being too serious. Then you begin to feel preachy, and that’s even more selfish than talking about yourself.”

But Barman says he does take his politics seriously.