Danny Brown is ready for his Afropunk Fest set to be over. Not because he’s having a bad time. As usual, he seems thrilled. “I can’t wait ‘til I’m done so I can go out there with the people," he announces cheerfully, "and smoke a big-ass blunt-- and I SMOOOKE!” Right on cue, "Blunt After Blunt"—from Brown's internet-fame-making 2011 mixtape XXX—begins to bellow through the speakers.

The rapper is on autopilot this August afternoon, cruising through a set he's tirelessly perfected over the last two years. His standard arsenal of crowd-pleasers is punctuated by his trademark tics: the devil horns thrown up high in the air, the electrocuted head-banging and hair-whipping, the lizard-like tongue spastically thrust through the toothless gap in his mouth. Unlike so many of his contemporaries, Brown appears on stage by himself, turns the vocals up high, and performs a carefully-mapped sequence of full tracks. He knows exactly when to turn his microphone to the audience, and they know the right words to yell: “Ate that bitch pussy ‘til she squirted like a dolphin!”

The Detroit native currently sits at the intersection of many hip-hop worlds. He's a weirdo with a traditionalist ear, a rap-nerd favorite who can make non-rap fans go crazy at festivals, a 32-year-old veteran the with kind of industry momentum typically granted to prodigies. He’s someone who can work with the most brutal of Chicago street rappers and then buy beats from—and befriend—a wholesome, Canadian electro-pop act like Purity Ring.

“People always looked at me, like, ‘Damn, Danny crazy,’ so I kinda ran with it," he tells me. "I would scare even the streetest niggas by hanging out with weird white boys and doing drugs—real killers would be like, ‘What the fuck is you doing?’”

But just as listeners at large have begun to fully embrace his brand of oddballism, Danny Brown is preparing to pivot away from his madcap, lovably sex-and-drug-crazed persona with his proper debut album, Old, which feels practically chaste stacked up to XXX. The changeup could unravel some of his victories, rendering him an underdog yet again. He doesn’t seem to mind.