It's a little after 2 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, and the rapper is standing

outside a club on Richmond near 59. He has just finished doing his very best to kick a hole in the cosmos with his rumbling, unforgiving live show, and is visibly upset.

Less than a week ago, his close friend Justin Conrad was murdered. J-Dawg shouted Conrad's name repeatedly during tonight's set.

"It wasn't for you, my nigga," he protested.

"You was an innocent nigga," he pleaded.

After each proclamation, he looked up over and over again. Sometimes he'd shake his head and pound his chest, but there was never anything there but the ceiling.

All around him was a party, with women, drinks, dancing, laughing, talking and people offering their congratulations on the local acclaim he's accumulated over the past two years. After building up to just a notch or two below legendary, it's now beginning to translate to national buzz thanks to his Behind Tint Vol. 2 mixtape.

J-Dawg never blinked.

His eyes are wide and deep and black, brimming with an almost uncontrollable energy. It's unsettling when they look directly at you. But they're not entirely merciless, not the eyes of a great white shark.

They are distraught and contemplative, permanently reddened around the edges from seeing too many horrible things. Including Conrad, J-Dawg has watched 20 people get buried in less than two years.

A man in perpetual turmoil, he is driven by his unwavering faith in God and chased by the devil's never-ending chaos. His performance tonight was markedly authentic.

J-Dawg's raspy voice, coarse and uncensored, is always full of emotion. Because this most recent hurt was still so fresh, tonight it was hyperbolized.

Faith guides him, but facts chip away at him. It's always been that way.

When J-Dawg was nine years old, his older cousin, whom he followed around like a pup, was beaten to death by members of the Bloods. To cope, he joined the Crips — because that's what you're supposed to do — and lived that life with conviction.

A tattoo on his face reads "OG Capo," the name of the Crip that sired him. J-Dawg's name is tattooed on Capo's face, too. It's among the highest orders of respect.

Growing up, he was shot and stabbed on several different occasions by different nefarious characters participating in different nefarious activities. He refused to go to the hospital for fear of being arrested, and instead elected to have a crackhead dress the wounds.

That crackhead, he'll ­readily tell you, was his mother.

These are not the worst things that have ever happened to him, but they are indicative of the things that have.

"I'm out of my head," he protested. "I'm in a really fucked-up mood."

Almost immediately after his set, J-Dawg stepped off stage and towards the exit. He no longer wears jewelry because his brain does not entertain the idea of pretense anymore. It only seems to know life and death. It sure as fuck knows death.

In a minute, he will walk up and introduce himself for an interview, even though everybody else has just paid money to see him. The dilemma is clear: How do you initiate a handshake with perhaps the most intimidating presence in all of Houston rap when he's in a fucked-up mood?

Obviously, you do not approach with a high-five. That's ludicrous. Grizzly bears don't high-five, and neither does J-Dawg. There's no telling how many Little League coaches and players he would've flummoxed as a child with his high-five embargo.

Do you approach with the informal hood shake, wherein the palms are slapped together, fingers curled together and bodies are pulled towards each other slightly? That might be appropriate in passing, but not here.

It has to be the standard business grip then: Palms together, each man's fingers curling around the other's. It makes sense. It's a simple, no-frills approach, which is about how J-Dawg approaches his music.

His process for writing a song is simple. He thinks about the things that he's seen or done, or seen done, and then thinks about how that makes him feel. Then he says it, and that's all there is to it.

Sometimes his bars don't even rhyme; his growl forces them into submission. It's entirely instinctive and occasionally transcendent.

For example, J-Dawg's Cy Fyre-produced single "Back Trippin'" somehow manages to humanize armed robbery, despite a preamble that includes the phrase "It's jackin' season, bitch."

Fitna rob me a bitch

Praying don't help, feel like I'm talking

to myself

And I ain't feeling that shit

Holidays coming, I ain't got nothing on

my stomach at all

Ain't no Christmas tree, ain't no gifts

Ain't no Santa Claus, no elves

But the Grinch up in this bitch, posted

in the bricks, in that all black trench

It's hardly a sonnet, but it's definitely poetry.

He approaches. People are still filtering­ out from his show. It's loud. He flicks his eyebrows up a bit.

"You want do this in the car?" he asks.

So for 30 minutes, J-Dawg sits still in the back of a midsize SUV, ­smoking weed and answering questions.

He says a lot of things, talking freely and with an unexpected amount of insight­. All of his words feel heavy.

When he talks about his mother, he says, "She had her habits. I love her."

When he talks about music, he says, "I wish I could be at peace enough one day to call myself a rapper. But I can't right now."

When he talks about his lifestyle, he says, "We don't glorify this, we only tell how it is. Ain't no real street nigga glorify this for the simple fact that they want something different."

When he talks about his legacy, he says, "I never cared about a better community. I was like, 'I hate all you niggas.' I was young. How can I look at a little nigga with potential and tell him to be a crook like me or a crazy nigga like me?

"Live the opposite way. That way ain't do nothing for me. It gave me scars that you can't cover."

And when you say that the interview is over, he says to bow your head and says a two-minute prayer specifically for you. It feels like the world has stopped spinning on its axis.

And then J-Dawg offers his hand.