He does make songs too, lots of them, at a level of production almost on a par with his former mentor Soulja Boy in 2007-8, or Lil B in 2010. And like Lil B he’s cultivated his own shorthand and lingo. Like “bringing the rice out,” which in one version refers to cocaine, but in another is equivalent to living over the top. When he puts words together, it’s seemingly at random, and almost always fantastical: a game of Mad Libs come to life.

He also has a knack for inserting himself into the center of hip-hop Internet flares. When the pixie-rap starlet Kitty Pryde arrived, within days Riff Raff was on a plane to Daytona Beach to record “Orion’s Belt,” a deliriously amusing song and video with her. Similarly, not long after the menacing young Chicago rapper Chief Keef began to achieve YouTube infamy, there was Riff Raff, partnering with him for “Cuz My Gear,” one of the year’s oddest collaborations. Chief Keef is a literalist, all square jaw and mean thoughts. Riff Raff is something else, opening the song like this:

Holograms on my hand gave me a tan wrist

Diamonds dancing on my fist look like a blank disc

Teriyaki soup with the lemon Fanta

Heavyweight, heartburn, Mylanta.

He performed that last during this concert, capping a bizarre show that began with that news conference and lasted maybe 20 minutes, including a midset intermission. He wore a headset microphone that he sometimes rapped into and sometimes used to obscure the fact that he wasn’t rapping at all. His hype man wore a T-shirt with an airbrushed image of Riff Raff’s face on it.

As a concert it was mystifying; as a spectacle it was impressively committed. His best songs have unlikely, catchy choruses: “Deion Sandals” was a high point here, as was “Lil Mama I’m Sorry.” Only “Hologram Benz,” a blowzy dubstep track from his recent mixtape “Birth of an Icon,” was an obvious misstep.