ANTIOCH — Back on his home turf, Mario Delgado was extending a hand to Antioch’s down-and-out.

Bearing sandwiches and boxes of exquisitely decorated cupcakes that a couple of local businesses had donated, he and a friend trudge alongside the railroad tracks to a homeless encampment under the Wilbur Avenue overcrossing.

A woman emerges from a large tent someone had erected amid the mounds of garbage; minutes later, a bearded man also shows up.

“What do you guys need out here?” Delgado asks the stranger who, without skipping a beat, says flashlights would be helpful.

The encounter marked the third time that the 37-year-old Antioch native has passed out food to the city’s poorest of the poor, a gesture that’s in stark contrast to the professional rapper’s onstage persona.

Known by the childhood nickname “Mars” to his fans, Delgado makes his living from a genre of hip hop music known as “horrorcore”; he composes lyrics about serial killers, suicide and other dark topics, and sometimes wears a Hannibal Lecter mask during performances.

Out of the limelight, however, he has been thinking about the needs of those who don’t have the money to buy the bare essentials, let alone CDs or concert tickets.

“We take these things for granted,” Delgado said of the wash cloths, soap, toothpaste and toothbrushes that he and his helper also gave away.

“It just makes me feel good. People … look at them as less than human. (But) this is my city and they count.”

In his baggy shorts, sneakers and backward ball cap, Delgado looks like any other Millennial. But this father of three long ago rejected conventional 9-to-5 jobs for a recording career that has him living in Antioch and Milwaukee, Wis., traveling around the country, and preparing for his first European tour late this year.

Delgado in January signed on with Force 5 Records, a Milwaukee-based record label that finances the production and marketing of his albums and works with a third party to distribute them overseas while Sony Musical Entertainment does the same in the United States.

Until this year, Delgado said he was doing all the work himself, pressing CDs, creating graphics, and booking his own tours.

These days he can focus solely on recording, and his fifth album, “Glockcoma” — 14 songs that he created with the help of a fellow musician in six days — is scheduled for release July 28.

Outside the recording studio; Delgado has started dabbling in acting; he shot a commercial and has a cameo appearance on an episode of Investigation Discovery network’s documentary series “Scorned: Love Kills.”

Life is good, but he’s always poised to make the next career move.

“I’m one of those people who are never comfortable with what I have,” Delgado said. “I believe the best is yet to come. No matter how much or how little I got, I know bigger opportunities are always coming.”