After several failed attempts at a Skype interview and an hour spent waiting at a coffee shop in Bushwick, I finally catch neon green-haired rapper PsychoEgyptian (née Devin Kyle Cuthbertson), on Instant Messenger. He’s at the Apple Store in Soho.

"So how did you get your teeth like that?" I blurt out instantly, staring into Cuthbertson's vacant-looking mouth next to a row of shiny new iPhones. "It’s called Ohaguro," he tells me. "An ancient tradition where Japanese woman would paint their teeth black to look beautiful." But it’s only temporary, the rapper says. He wants onyx and black diamond grills.

"I've been really busy" he says as we exit the electronics store and head towards Chinatown. This week alone, he's dropped a mixtape, music video, and two new tracks on Mykki Blanco’s Dogfood Music Group’s first compilation album, C-ORE.

Walking down Prince Street, I ask him why he was hanging out in the Apple Store in the first place. "It’s where I do my business," he says after confessing he doesn’t own a phone or computer. "I feel like a pirate. I’m taking from the main power source and using it for my own purposes".

I’m reminded of Prince Harvey, the hip-hop artist who went viral after recording an album at the Apple Store. "Do you think it’s just a gimmick?" I ask. "To be honest, I used to do the same thing," he says. "The problem is that nobody is questioning the real politics of the situation. Why doesn’t Prince Harvey have the space to be able to make an album in a studio? Why does he have to go to the Apple Store? That doesn't come up. It reinforces this American upstart kind of shit."

This mentality is exactly what PsychoEgyptian and the other artists (Mykki Blanco, Violence, Yves Tumor) behind Dogfood MG are trying to avoid. Frustrated by what Blanco refers to as "a singular image of African American music", Dogfood MG is a label that seeks to promote musicians that exist "outside of the black American norm", enabling artists like PsychoEgyptian, a rapper with roots in noise and experimental music, to record and release records on a mass scale.

With an upcoming performance scheduled for the Afropunk festival in Atlanta, I ask him how he feels about participating in a show that he's been openly critical of on social media. "It’s a double edged sword," he says. "You need the system to talk about the system."

He’s referring to the increasing commercialisation of the Afropunk genre, a label that the rapper identifies as inherently problematic. "Punk is a very exclusive, very radicalized music. It doesn’t necessarily accept people with different backgrounds whether they be gay, women, black, Asian," he says, underscoring the exclusivity of white suburban punk culture. "I just feel like people give too much credit to punk. I feel like there should be more categories for things that aren’t necessarily popular or mainstream."

According to PsychoEgyptian, what started as a club night in Chinatown for underground musicians has now become a massive commercial festival with big name acts and expensive tickets. "All the real black punk bands are having a hard time even playing Afropunk, because the promoters aren't interested in getting local bands who might not have ever been heard before. They just want big names, like, since when did Lenny Kravitz become punk?"

"So do you feel like your selling out by playing the show?" I ask him as we make our way under the Manhattan Bridge. "Existing is a compromise between you and your environment" he says, drawing on a cigarette. "But you still can delegate how and to what extent you’re willing to compromise. By me playing Afropunk, I don't think I'm necessarily selling out. If anything, I’m able to play to people who are like-minded, and maybe, if I’m given the chance, I’ll tell people this same shit onstage – that we can do better."

After dropping out of high school in Bushwick and getting his GED, the kid named Devin Kyle Cuthbertson n decided that he wanted to be an artist. A self-described misfit living in a youth transitional home, he was accepted at Cooper Union after a second attempt at applying, only to be expelled three years later for making art that was "too true to life."

Shortly afterwards he found moderate success living in an artist’s loft on Jefferson Avenue. Inspired by his surroundings, he began exhibiting his drawings and paintings at galleries, only to find himself struggling to find a job and a place to live after spending a month at Rikers Island due to graffiti charges.

"Being in jail, I realised that my experience wasn’t unique," he says. "I couldn’t just be an artist living in my own sphere. I had to do things in a way to be more accessible, to make art that was relatable to people in my community."

And that’s when PsychoEgyptian, aka hOla zygOte, was born. An ode to Eon Flux and Afrofuturism, Cuthbertson's story of PsychoEgyptian – a black superhero who traversed an alternate universe – is just a small part of the repertoire of sci-fi realities that underscore his multidisciplinary art forms. I ask him why he feels this need to create alternate identities.

"It's a way reconciling race and identity and power through the creation of an alternative space" PsychoEgyptian says. "Hip-hop is a form of fiction in and of itself, it's a form of storytelling, and for me it's important to have my own mythology to tell my story."

But PsychoEgyptian still doesn’t see himself as a musician. "What I’m doing is still art. I’m creating a worldview, I’m creating a culture rather than creating just objects for rich people. I could do that too just as easily, and who knows, maybe one day I will."