A call from an unknown international number lights up my phone.

On the other end of the line is George ‘Joji’ Miller, the mysterious man behind absurdist web series Filthy Frank TV—and most recently, the creator of one of the strangest albums to ever reach the top of the iTunes charts, Pink Season.

Before the call, Miller made me jump through hoops to prove my identity, worried that I was one of his “very creative” fans pulling an elaborate prank on him. Apparently these are the precautions you're forced to take when you’ve built a massive cult following (four million YouTube subscribers and counting) in the weirdest corners of the internet.

Having spent the afternoon watching Miller thrash around in a pink body suit on YouTube and hearing his Pink Guy alter-ego yell about small dicks and dog-eating festivals on Pink Season, I half expect him to spend the whole conversation screaming obscenities into the receiver.

I have no idea what I’m getting myself into.

“Hey, what’s up, dude?” a friendly, even-tempered voice greets me.

I begin the conversation with some questions about the world Miller has built around himself—hoping for some insight into his comedic style and the obsessive fans who pushed his oddball album into the ranks of industry heavyweights like The Weeknd on iTunes.

“I was doing music way before the Filthy Frank stuff,” Miller says of his creative beginnings. “I've always wanted to make normal music. I just started the YouTube channel to kind of bump my music. But then Filthy Frank and the Pink Guy stuff ended up getting way bigger than I thought so I had to kind of roll with it.”

I just love making music and doing nasty shit, so I combined the two.

Expecting to hear him answer with an origin story about stumbling into music as a way to deliver his comedy, this catches me off guard.

Diving into a SoundCloud account dedicated to his serious music after the call, Miller’s world comes into focus as my preconceptions begin to fade away.

On the opposite end of the spectrum as his brash internet personas Filthy Frank and Pink Guy, his serious music as “Joji” is, well... it's beautiful. With a captivating, understated quality, it’s hard to believe that this is even coming from the same person.

So, how did we get here? Why is a talented musician like Miller spending so much time and energy on a bizarre comedic alter-ego?

As with everything else about him, the answer unfolds in layers. Miller's knee-jerk response is a simple one: “I just love making music and doing nasty shit, so I combined the two.”

Then, things get a little more interesting.

“I thought the best way to get [my music] out there was through a character that's kind of zany and wacky,” he tells me.

“My main goal is to be able to make music seriously one day. I'm just going with what's most marketable at the moment.” Miller adds, “It was the only way that I could get music out and still keep an audience.”

He has a point. Mainstream music’s current obsession with internet culture is indisputable. As we enter 2017, the top two songs in the country are “Black Beatles” and “Bad and Boujee,” a pair of tracks propelled to the top of the charts by memes.

Miller has seen this effect first-hand. He is credited by many as the creator of the first viral trend to drive a song all the way up to No. 1: The “Harlem Shake.”

Four years later, the lines between internet culture and the music industry continue to blur.

“All these young producers are really into internet culture. At the end of the day, they're all kind of nerds who wear cool clothing,” Miller says. “A lot of DJs and producers who are under the age of 24 that are in my generation fuck with the internet pretty hard […] They get it. In about twenty years, it's going to be a whole different environment. Right now is the tipping point.”

You can't just force internet culture on people. Those kinds of things happen on their own.

As the industry scrambles to catch up and use internet culture to its advantage, Miller is able to leverage his natural comedic side to build a large audience that's happy to consume everything he does across all mediums.

“You can't just force internet culture on people," he says. "Those kinds of things just happen on their own. The biggest things that blew up musically through internet culture and memes and whatnot, they all happened naturally. Like, Ugly God, when he put out ‘I Beat My Meat,’ he wasn't [forcing] it. It just happened.”