Is Riff Raff a joke?

The question often comes up when people listen to the controversial, Houston-born rapper. His braided hair, grills so massive they impede his speech and lily-white skin covered in tattoos have led to accusations of cultural misappropriation. In a much-cited incident, radio programming director Ebro Darden of New York City station Hot 97, in a roundtable interview with Riff Raff, laid out his concerns: “When I see what you present, it looks to me as a stereotype of a certain type of black person.” His often absurdist lyrics and flamboyant music videos (YouTube was a major contributor to his rise) have helped further the idea that Riff Raff — born Horst Simco — is playing a character.

But then there’s “Time.” At first glance, the video for “Time,” a hip-hop ballad from Riff Raff’s 2014 debut studio album “Neon Icon,” fits in with the rest of Riff Raff’s off-kilter humor. As Riff Raff sings and raps, a woman’s hands can be seen caressing his face, neck and chest. One scene shows the woman stacking potato chips on Riff Raff’s torso; in another, she pushes her feet into his face to seemingly force a grin.

The lyrics tell a different story. Over three verses, Riff Raff wrestles with fickle friends, women and his relationship with his father: “In this life I live, my dad is my best friend, but it seems like I only call him when I need some money.” The track, underpinned by acoustic guitar and a simple electronic beat, exudes profound loneliness; at one point, he half-raps, half croons: “My days are slow, and my nights are cold, and when I go to sleep, I gotta keep the TV on.”

Riff Raff’s January release “Aquaberry Aquarius,” a mixtape produced by DJ Afterthought, features another such moment. “I’m Not Waiting on the Summer,” a reggae-inflected pop song with nary a rap to be heard, is another lament on loneliness, though the chorus makes clear that, unlike on “Time,” Riff Raff is ready to seize the moment: “I’m not waiting for somebody else to tell me how to live my life.”

“That’s the closest I’ve made to a real song about my life and what’s going on in my life since I made the ‘Time’ song,” Riff Raff said recently while wandering the streets of San Francisco with his entourage on a day off from his current tour, which hits the Domino Room on Friday. “… I like to usually keep my music light and like party-style and really high energy. I make my songs based on how I think I will perform it on the stage, more than trying to make a song for someone, you know what I mean? Whereas an artist like Adele or something like that, or Lana Del Rey or someone, they make the music based on — I don’t know, it’s a different vibe, you know what I mean? It’s about their real emotions or what they’re going through.”

Riff Raff is notoriously tight-lipped about his past. An extensive 2013 article in LA Weekly traced the rapper’s roots from Houston, to a community college in Hibbing, Minnesota. In the mid-2000s he returned to Houston and began his hip-hop career in earnest, selling CDs at colleges and malls. In 2009, he was a contestant on MTV’s “From G’s to Gents,” introducing him to a much wider audience — he changed his name to MTV Riff Raff for the show and got a tattoo of the channel’s logo on his neck. In the early 2010s, he was part of hip-hop comedy group Three Loco with Andy Milonakis and Dirt Nasty.

In his brief conversation with GO! Magazine — cut off after nine minutes when he announced he was “about to go eat breakfast,” just after 1 p.m.— Riff Raff sounded distracted, at one point seemingly addressing a woman who was slamming doors: “How would you be mad at me because I’m doing an interview?” (Turns out she was just on the phone herself).

His upcoming Domino Room show will be his first performance in Bend. Don’t ask him what to expect, though.

“S—, I don’t even know what I’m doing in five minutes,” he said. “I’m supposed to go to a restaurant. I might decide to go … sky diving and s—. I don’t know what people can expect.”

He was more willing to talk about his other artistic and business endeavors. In past interviews he’s expressed interest in acting, and he teased “four or five movies” coming up that he will act in, including a “Peach Panther” movie based on his second studio album of the same name. He also has his own strain of marijuana coming out with the same company that released rapper Wiz Khalifa’s strain Khalifa Kush.

As for his music, Riff Raff said he’s interested in further exploring other styles of music, as he did on “I’m Not Waiting on the Summer.” Though he’s an avowed fan of Vanilla Ice and Houston rappers such as Paul Wall, fans may be surprised to learn his tastes are much more varied.

“I grew up listening to Sublime and Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, Duran Duran,” he said. “I used to watch MTV and VH1, you know what I mean? There’s some George Michael videos in there, there’s real creative and artistic things. I took all that type of stuff in when I was like 5 or 7 years old. Maybe a normal kid could have watched those same videos and not remember them, and I have the worst memory, but all that stuff that I do remember is still what sticks with me and what I feel makes me a different artist than a lot of people, because I still have the same mind I did when I was 5 years old.”

What: Riff Raff, with DJ Afterthought, Dolla Bill Gates, Owey, Peter Jackson

When: 7 p.m. Friday

Where: Domino Room, 51 NW Greenwood Ave., Bend

Cost: $18 plus fees, $75 plus fees for VIP meet-and-greet

Contact: redlightpro.com or 541-408-4329