Ben Folds is an artist full of surprises. He’s the kind of dude that leaks fake versions of his own albums, advises his audience to floss at least every other week and covers Dr. Dre’s rap “Bitches Ain’t Shit” with a classical twist – yet is still serious enough to craft a beautiful melody.

“Snoop Dogg got in touch with our management and said that he loved it… I feel like it was appreciated. I don’t know Dre and those guys, but I have to think that they’re pretty well aware of what they do. They’re smart guys. I would think that it would probably be interesting to them to hear their rap turned into pretty white boy music,” Folds said. “There’s a lot of respect involved. We thought it was funny as well, but mostly I was interested in the effect. I put one of my best melodies to this… I actually thought it was a seriously pretty melody and those don’t come cheap.”

Folds has played in Madison many times and is excited to be back – this time at the Overture Center for the Arts Jan. 27 – having come a long way from his band Ben Folds Five and their “punk rock for sissies.” He looks back, noting that background and history is what shapes everything in his body of work.

“I often said I was bummed that my parents didn’t let me go to more of an arts school…but years later public school provided me with three albums worth of material,” he said. “So, I think that you are to some extent the sum of your experiences and how you navigated them; you have to live.”

While he finds it too abstract to compare himself directly with other pop artists, especially Lady Gaga, he has a modest outlook on how being in his 40s gives him a different outlook from when he started.

“Age matters less the older you get; it’s just the pure mathematics of it,” Folds said. “You do gain a different perspective as you get older and it’s not necessarily any better. But it’s like being in an obstacle course and hollering back to the guys behind you that there’s a hill up ahead.”

A stunt Folds has done in the past at his concerts was to have an ongoing chat roulette stream going on a screen onstage. This was done as a tribute to YouTube piano player, and Folds look-alike, Merton, who originated the idea of personally serenading Chat Rouletters from his own home. Only time will tell if Madison concert-goers will be graced with a similar treat.

“People were congratulating me on the Chat Roulette thing; I didn’t know what Chat Roulette was or what they thought was so funny,” Folds said. “We just happened to be on tour and thought well how funny would it be to put a giant computer screen onstage, and when those Chat Rouletters come in they see that dude at the piano with the hood on, but there’s thousands of people in the audience. It seemed like a lot of fun so there wasn’t a lot of thinking we just had to work with that, getting a screen and a stable connection.”

With such a diversity of themes behind his work, it is easy for fans to relate to each of his unique pieces of music. Folds said he thinks some read further into his songs than even he did when writing them.

“I’m trying to decide if I tell stories or not; I think more like snapshots, more like portraits sometimes,” he said. “I like finding a couple moments that resonate that might imply a bigger story. I think when people think there’s a story being told it’s because they’re inserting their own story which is probably the right reaction to have. I think as a musician the storytelling is often inherent in the art.”

As well as being a judge on NBC’s show, The Sing Off, Folds recently completed a new album with novelist Nick Hornby (“High Fidelity,” “Fever Pitch”). He said of this collaboration that it occurred to him to work with a non-typical lyrics writer when he realized he wanted to make non-typical music.

“I think if you want to make albums that you’ve never heard before it’s helpful to use ingredients that aren’t often used,” Folds said. “Nick was very well aware that he wasn’t writing a book; he wasn’t going to have 600 pages to get the point across… It yields a different result because the perspective is different. The methods aren’t that different. We can all get stuck in our little worlds, you begin to think that this is the way people hear music and here’s what needs to be done.”

With a little over a week remaining before Folds will hit the stage at the Overture, he has one piece of vital advice to leave with potential audience-members.

“Everyone should remember to floss,” he said. “Don’t go crazy, even just once every other day. Weeks can go by and you realize you haven’t flossed, and it’s not good.”