"The response was so strong that when I got a deal in Europe, the record company thought this has got to be a single," recalls Black. "It seemed like a legal nightmare." It was. Biggie's camp quickly vetoed the "interpolation" and forced Black into a corner. "So I said, 'Everyone likes the song, I'm going to write my own lyrics," he says. "They were kind of my response to the situation going on, like, 'What the fuck do I got to do to have my one little bit of good luck in life?'" The result was "Symphonies" (video above), a raved-about, sweetly melancholic pop anthem that's since been an iTunes Single of the Week and remixed by Passion Pit and Cudi, with whom Black will continue to collaborate. It's also the first single on his debut album, Un, which dropped yesterday. "Not another human has made a sound on that record," he told me of the effort, which references everything from Brooklyn rap to Biloxi Blues via a 17th Century cavern mindset.

"In most songs there's blatant thievery afoot, but I just tend to steal from five things at once at the same moment so it's not so..." says Black. Meaning the club-ready "Pump My Pumps" is a send up of Dirty Mind-era Prince and classic Aphex Twin electronica, where the folksy synth-rocker "Yours" seemingly mixes Justin Timberlake with a little Sonny Boy Williamson, acoustic guitars and break beats. But at the end of the day they're all decidedly Black, a Buckinghamshire-born pop obsessive. While it's hard to tell who exactly the real Black is–the romantic English art school dropout (he briefly studied painting at Chelsea College of Art & Design) or the neon face-painted synth-popper he appears as on stage–my guess is a little more of the former, judging from the deep emotional charge in the lyrics on the repeat-button-worthy ballads "Cigarette Pack" ("All my plans on the back of a cigarette pack") and "Ecstasy" ("I want that hot breath of life in me").  "I quite like the one man and his vision ideal," says Black, who is embarking on a short North American tour kicking off tomorrow at Mercury Lounge. "And I like people who got a myth around them and who are what they create, their lives are what they represent, and those are a blurring that feed into each other. Lou Reed, Prince, Morrissey, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce." In other words, get ready for the Dan Black creation myth.

Un is available now. Dan Black tour information can be found here.