“With every stroke of my brush/I weave a tapestry of rhapsody that’s sewn in my blood”, Pressure raps on the title track, lest you think it’s not poetry, too. What he means by “literal” is there’s no place for faking it. Not in a country that’s made a blood sport of savaging tall poppies.

Even this far up the food chain, it’s a sore point on the new album. “When you answer your calling they’ll hate on you” are the first words, sung by longtime collaborator Nyassa. “[They’ll] stop you from soaring ’cause they want you/To fall from the light”. The Hoods aren’t having it. The song insists on soaring despite the “most hated/most popular” dichotomy social media has amplified a thousandfold since they weathered their earliest detractors.

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Get Well Soon is even more barbed: “Don’t worry about me/’Cause I don’t think about you/If I saw my life through your eyes/I’d probably hate me, too”. That hook’s sung by Matiu Walters from New Zealand’s Six60, but in a genre renowned for flexing, the self-deprecation in the bravado feels distinctly local.

This is part of what makes Hilltop Hoods ours. Sure, US hip-hop has matured, in some hands at least, beyond the violence and misogyny of cliche to explore more tender emotional terrain. But as Adelaide’s favourite dads continue to lean inwards, it’s tempting to see parallels with this Australian generation’s evolving sense of self.

“I guess I like to think that hip-hop can be a document of society and sometimes, because it’s so literal, it speaks on current issues,” says Pressure. “We’re not a political band but are we a reflection of the average life in Australia? Probably.”

The unfiltered Aussie accents place identity in your face – a bold move back in the ’90s for a musical form so entrenched in urban America, and still remarkably potent. But it’s there more subtly, too, in an attitude and humour we can’t fail to recognise as real.

On the new album, The Omelette is classic Hoods comedy: a cautionary tale about brain-scrambling psychedelic experiments of their youth. Don’t Happy, Be Worry manages to parody cheesy American platitudes and our own preference for gallows humour: “I’m not here for a good time/Or a long time, from what it looks like”.

For pop romantics there’s Laced Up, in which the cost of living turns a hot date into a bin fire when the bill arrives: “Can I get a Heimlich manoeuvre?/I can’t swallow my pride”. The Gift (featuring Marlon Motlop) is an open love letter to a suburban family life awash with music – surely the only song ever to namecheck Hush.

Older? Several tracks teeter on the edge of depression but refuse to concede. “If that thought’s a worry I hold it like it love me,” Suffa raps on This Year. “A bear hug to crush me and then it corrupts me.” Dude. Anybody else feeling that?

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Again, it’s not like we can’t relate to the good stuff coming out of the US, the UK or anywhere else, but the more familiar the accents, the more unapologetically close to home they feel. In the Hilltop Hoods’ hands, a genre built on revolution and grandstanding is all about humour, tenderness, self-awareness and inclusion. Hate on that if you can.

Last week’s reaffirmation of The Nosebleed Section was a neat precursor, as it turns out, to Fall from the Light. Triple J listeners’ second-favourite Australian song of all time is a rap about communion, not performance; being in the crowd, not above it.

Pressure isn’t gonna lie. “I’d love to see it come in at No.1,” he says of the new album. But he also knows there’s a gang of KPop rascals snapping at their heels, so he’s keeping expectations modest. Another No.2 would be pretty cool for a bunch of hip-hop dads from Adelaide.

Fall from the Light is out Friday, August 1.