Chicago rapper ShowYouSuck has been producing incredible work for the better part of the last two years while somehow staying just off the music world’s radar. That’s all about to change. Especially if  his third and final installment of the “One Man Pizza Party”, “Rest In Pizza”, lives up to the magnificent hype it’s been building over the last nine months (and it most likely will).

ShowYouSuck is almost the hip-hop world’s equivalent of Andrew WK while simultaneously being beautifully self-deprecating and introspective. The man name-checks GG Allin, Mastodon, and Pimp C in one track and laments a relationship and his songwriting skills in another. It’s refreshing to hear an artist explore himself so sharply with deft pop-culture references that don’t sound like they’ve been run through a tired Us Weekly simile-generator (‘sup Lil’ Wayne, hey Childish Gambino).

In case you haven’t been along for the very fun ride I’ve personally compiled a ShowYouSuck starter guide so you’re not left out when “Rest In Pizza” explodes:

“OneManPizzaParty” and “OMPP2: Mo Slices, Mo Problems” are the first two of the One Man Pizza Party trilogy (a trilogy based on Suck’s penchant for coping with the end of a relationship by eating) and both can be downloaded from his bandcamp for $1 each. Believe me, that price is more than fair. Don’t sleep.

“Loose Slices“, a mixtape of extra OMPP tracks worthy of their own album, was released in the interim between OMPP2 and “Rest In Pizza”. These loose slices make up a more than stellar and complete pizza that you should definitely check out. The album cover is also in the running for my “favorite of all time” award.

Two months ago ShowYouSuck teamed up with Stefan Ponce to release what might be my favorite of his works, the “Girls, Girls, Girls” EP. The free (free!) EP cracks and fizzes with fun energy, even when dipping into the dark side of ShowYouSuck’s trademark Two-Face personality.  “Mediocre” is a chilled and teary ballad that vibrates some of the Weeknd’s atmospheric moods with more substantial lyrical content about the man himself rather than a stretched out MDMA come down. On “John Waters”, he raps over a jaunty gypsy beat that “rap ain’t really that hard, homie/a punk band’s what I really wanted”. Makes total sense for the dude who’s done live shows in a Gwar tee and who has a song called “Girls, Nachos” (which is killer).

I spoke briefly to ShowYouSuck, aka Clinton Sandifer, at the end of August to discuss the “Girls, Girls, Girls” EP. The man is a joyful, positive gem who manages to stay extremely modest.

Tell me about the new EP, how’d that come about? I’m really into it.
Thanks man! Yeah, the EP’s called “Girls, Girls, Girls” and it was completely produced by Stefan Ponce. Basically Stefan Ponce did another album with an artist by the name of Chandler London called “The Science of Sleep” and I’m a huge, huge fan of it. Me and Stefan Ponce and a bunch of other artists went down to South by Southwest together and while we were down there we kind of lightly talked about doing a project together. Then a month or two passed and we both got kind of busy but he sent me five beats. And I recorded my end of it and sent ‘em back to him and then he kind of reconfigured the beats to match the verses I did. And then ‘Girls, Girls, Girls’ was born!

That makes a lot of sense. I really dig ‘Mediocre’.
Actually that’s the next, I guess you’d call it the single, a video’s coming out for that one. That record, I had the beat for a couple weeks and I was really stuck with what to do with it. I actually didn’t write, like, nothing was physically written for that song. I just literally recorded it going off the top of my head for the verses. After I did the verses me and my engineer sat back and we were like ‘damn, I don’t know how we feel about this’ cause the beat was kind of just a continuous loop. It didn’t sound that great [laughs]. So I said ‘what are we gonna do for the hook?’ and then was like ‘Yo, if I say the song isn’t that great then no one can really complain about it being not great. I already said it wasn’t great!’ And then over the hook came the stuff about the girl and I tried to make it match up. Actually, I didn’t think Stefan was gonna like it at all. I thought he was gonna scrap it.

On “John Waters” you say you wish you started a punk band-
Yeah that’s how I started- um, my first love is really actually metal. I grew up on Headbanger’s Ball. I grew up on the west side of Chicago and on the west side of Chicago no one else listens to bands, so I could never be in a band. So just out of desperation of wanting to do something musically I was like “fuck it, I’ll just rap.”

You should start a punk band now.
Man, dude, I really want to! But it’s kind of too demanding. To get like four people on the same page? Especially how my schedule is now that this rap shit is taking off I really don’t have the time to now and I’m kinda bummed out. But my shows, I try to at least have a punk spirit.

ShowYouSuck has also appeared in videos with Isaiah Toothtaker, Mr. Muthafuckin eXquire, modeled in the Mishka NYC lookbook, and has helped start the clothing line Slurp Cult. As for the release date on “Rest In Pizza”? I asked him via twitter This morning and this is what he had to say:

“@iluvbutts247: @showyousuck dude when does #RESTINPIZZA come out?” THIS FALL HOMIE!

— ShowYouSuck (@ShowYouSuck) October 29, 2012