It’s the last night of Ankith Woods’s first-ever tour. The show is over, the venue emptying. The bartender wipes down her domain. A stripper sits on a stool, texting idly. A handful of young rappers mill around the merch booth. In New England Patriots pajama pants and a Rolling Stones t-shirt, Ankith surveys his wares: black crop tops that say “Soulless” and t-shirts that say “Why The Fuck They Make Plan B’s If I Can’t Bust In It.”

The 22-year-old rapper from suburban Michigan has just finished a four-date run through his hometown Detroit, New York, L.A., and, tonight, Chicago. His set at Subterranean was so wild and uncategorizable that I do what Ankith says on his first viral song, “Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter,” and spend too much on a t-shirt “because I’m an idiot.” The merch endorses a message I support: “It’s Dumb As Hell That Dave’s Hot Chicken Charge You For A Fountain Drink That Should Be Part of the Combo.” I put it on over my sweatshirt, and Ankith tells me my fit looks ten times better.

I find myself here, wearing this silly t-shirt, for the same reason I presume the rest of the hodgepodge crowd came out on a Sunday night: Ankith Woods entered my algorithm.

The first @ankithwoods reel you’re served might seem like a joke. Who is this Indian-American Midwestern kid talking about being strapped up like an Iranian and having blues and yellows like a Ukrainian? Why do I keep flicking through his “Proving I Can Rap On Every Genre” series? And why does he sound so good rapping over bagpipes?

The more you like and share, the quicker you’ll learn that Ankith is far from a meme account. He’s a funny writer and smart promoter with a clear-eyed vision for his creative future. He’ll pummel you with braggadocious punchlines then uppercut himself with brutal self-effacing vulnerability. He’ll talk about drugs and sex and then about calling his mom and crying at a Lana Del Rey concert.

Ankith says the Midwest, so far, has been his primary demographic. He’s the type of rapper that might baffle the rest of the country but makes perfect sense in the eccentric creative hotbed of his home state. “There’s no song structure [in Michigan],” he tells me. “The lack of structure is the structure.” There are shades of Teejayx6 in his scam rap flow, BabyTron in his casual absurdity, Rio da Yung OG in his imagery, Danny Brown in his genre deconstruction, and even Eminem in his self-aware humor. And yet, like 03 Greedo’s spiritual cousin, he cites Lana Del Rey and Future as his primary influences.

Like and share enough Ankith Woods posts, and a radicalized fandom emerges. Enough to see the posts about the local show, show up at it, and scream “FUCK DAVE’S HOT CHICKEN” in gleeful unison with likeminded strangers.

In our post-show interview, which you can watch in the documentary above, I ask Ankith about the difference between amassing an online following and fostering live in-person events. He says he thinks of them as two different skills. He simply wants to be the best at both. Still, he has a lyric about feeling empty after getting two million TikTok views, and tells me his show in Detroit at the start of this tour “felt better than any views [he] ever got.”

Rapping since high school and throughout college, Ankith has attained relative success on the internet, and his digital grind is now starting to have tangible effect in the real world. Last year, he opened for Rio da Yung OG. At a fan meetup before he opened for Skrilla, a guy named Brody the Bagpiper brought his titular instrument just to play it for Ankith. Impressed, Ankith told Brody to join him onstage in 30 minutes. The clip went viral, and now Brody the Bagpiper has been onstage at every stop of the tour. Their song together is a clear crowd favorite. The phones come out. The cycle between the digital world and the physical one repeats. The marathon continues.

VIDEO: On the Road with Ankith Woods