In the last year, the man born Christopher Harris has ascended to cult-hero status among online rap heads, creeping toward ubiquity through sheer force of will. In 2018 alone he dropped five full-length records, including Just Gimme a Minute, a remarkable album that plays like a series of 60-second vignettes over a bed of production that recalls, and occasionally lifts directly from, the textures of 1990s R&B. In just the last couple of weeks, he put out two separate 18-minute releases, Crackheads Live Longer Than Vegans and The Future Will Be Confusing, that include processed, impressive vocal runs where he sings about Denny’s along with shots at pizza impresario Papa John and nods to Southern rap pioneer Gangsta Boo. His absurd and provocative sense of humor is reflected in the titles of his songs: “Discount Cocaine on Father’s Day,” “Turning Down Pussy Builds Character,” “Imagine Not Being Black.”

Each Chris Crack record has its own internal, very-online logic. He will follow up wisdom told to him by friends with jokes that have been sanded down to their most economical phrasings, as if by a master comic. “Get out and do it, don’t just fuckin’ dream it/Those is fake Yeezys, I can’t unsee it,” he raps in his high-pitched taunt of a voice on a recent loosie called “Dick Pic,” sounding like a wiseass combination of Danny Brown and Chris Rock.

But the undercurrent of his music is darker than all of the digital-native shit-talking might suggest. “A lot of my writing comes from pain and suffering,” he tells me. “Just Gimme a Minute is sad as shit. I will probably never listen to that album again.”

Chris Crack: The Future Will Be Confusing (via SoundCloud)

In explaining how he arrived at his style—a singular combination of recklessness and bookishness—the lanky rapper gives credit to the less-than-legal support systems that gave him his skeptical eye and tolerance for risk as well as the lessons he learned in the academic drills his mother would run him through during summer breaks back in the day.

Chris lives on the West Side of Chicago—which he calls “the most segregated city in the world”—just a block away from the Schwinn Bicycle offices where his parents met. His mother’s family are white Quakers from Canada who settled in Pennsylvania; his maternal grandparents were both in the math faculty at Penn State and published several academic books. His mom taught math for 30 years at public schools in Chicago, eventually heading the department and serving as dean of discipline at William Howard Taft High. Chris tried to attend the school, but the idea was nixed after a brief trial run was dotted by fights and mad dashes home through unfriendly gang territory.

His father, who is black and from Mississippi, had his own construction company. He was a near-constant presence during Chris’ upbringing, but the two were not particularly close. “I was raised by a village,” Chris says, citing an acerbic godmother and amused OGs. Also in his childhood home were his younger sister and older half-brother, whom young Chris idolized: He and his friends would scamper downstairs to his brother’s room when he wasn’t around, jump on his bed, and marvel at his closet. “He was a super gangbanging cool guy, and I would try his watches on, his jackets, posing in the mirror with his gun,” Chris recalls. “I just wanted to be like him so bad.”