The Fluxus art movement, which was active in the 1960s, was as much a state of mind as a particular style. Proponents, such as Yoko Ono, espoused an iconoclastic ideology and reacted against orthodox art forms. Specialising in "happenings", interactive performances (way before the advent of the PC), daring use of video and found objects, the movement paved the way for Conceptual Art, and was woefully misunderstood by the critics of the time.

One of its leading members was Al Hansen (party trick: pushing pianos off the top of tall buildings), who is also the grandfather of Beck: "I remember being about five and my grandfather arriving at the house one day out of nowhere," says Beck. "He had a bag of junk with him, magazines, cigarette butts and refuse which he would use in his art pieces. I had some old toys out back, including a broken plastic rocking horse. The next day I came home from school and he had taken the horse, cut off the head and glued cigarette butts all over it, and then sprayed the whole thing silver. I think things of that nature showed me the possibilities that lie within everyday disposable objects, that we can act as alchemists and turn shit into gold."

Cut and paste, reworking found objects, turning something old into something new - it's as much a description of Beck's head-turning take on modern music as it is of a now largely forgotten art movement. Taking already existing samples, beats and riffs, Beck arranges them in a harmonic order, adding an appealing backdrop of country, folk and Delta blues to complete the picture - or collage, if you really want to nail down the analogy. It's the right time and right place for the 29-year-old, scrawnylooking, almost horizontally laid-back musical prodigy.

If the late 1990s stand for anything, they stand for playfulness and pastiche, a reinvigoration of traditional forms done in a contemporary style. While most bands take one step back and then just stay there (Oasis et al) others, like Beck, Moby and The Flaming Lips, stay just long enough to gather up what they need before moving on.

"Oh dear, it's just such a problematic area. And I get really sick of hearing terms like `post-modern' and `hybrid' being flung at my music," he says, "and in the same way I'm always described as a `cultural magpie'. I like to think there's a bit more to it than just melding together hip-hop, folk and country. It's not all cut and paste with loads of fuzz guitars, sitars and tambourines in the mix. You know, it's just a bit too easy to fake that sort of sound. Do you know they have things now known as `vinylisers' - it's a sort of studio machine that takes your perfectly produced studio sound and gives it a scratchy, lofi, vinyl sound. I mean, what's going on?"

Although best known on this side of the Atlantic for the multimillion-selling (and era-defining) albums, Mellow Gold (1994) and Odelay (1996), for a good few years previously he was a leading light on the US left-field music scene. His very first single, and possibly one of the greatest-ever song titles, was MTV Makes Me Want To Smoke Crack (a devastating critique of the homogenised middle of the dial sounds perpetuated by the music channel) but his real breakthrough came with the slacker anthem, Loser (as in "I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me"). The Beastie Boys once remarked that "Loser was the final proof that hip-hop was the folk music of the 1990s".

Shoved into the limelight as a spokesperson for a generation, he reacted strongly against the label: "I never had any slack; I was too busy working in crappy jobs, like working in a video store doing things like alphabetising the pornographic section for the minimum wage," he says.

As strange as it may seem now, only 500 copies of Loser were originally pressed up but with word getting around, the major labels came a-knocking. "The whole thing got crazy," he says, "I had people like David Geffen actually calling me at home to express his interest. And eventually the Geffen label re-released Loser and it charted all over the place. Everyone was saying I was the king slacker and I didn't even know what a slacker was! I'd be doing photo shoots and they'd be going `try and look tired or something' and I'd be going `oh, OK'. It was crazy."

The type of contract Beck signed with his multinational employers remains, today, an oddity and a real demonstration of artist-power (before they were all castrated by the accountancy department). It was a "non-exclusive" contract which meant that he would be able to release so-called "uncommercial" music on other record labels, as long as he released his "commercial" music on the Geffen label. All this means in reality, is that some of his best work is on tiny indie labels and is very hard to track down but all his "commercial" music is racked up nicely in your local record store. It's a state of affairs which has led to some bizarre showdowns with the label; often he has submitted music which he says falls under the "uncommercial" label but which the label say they want because they think it is "commercial". Lawyers are called and it all becomes a bit farcical.

Beck shrugs his shoulders at the nonsense of it all. Sitting in a plush but anonymous hotel room, he's wearing an ill-fitting jumper over his super-thin frame and a beat-up straw hat adorns his scraggy blond hair. He's here to talk about his new album, Midnite Vultures, but also to ask a few questions of his own.

"You've heard the album; do you think they'll play it on the alternative stations or the hiphop stations? All this formatting thing is so stupid, especially in my case. What I really wanted to make this time out was an album like an old soul record, something by Marvin Gaye or Sly and The Family Stone. I always liked that sort of music even when grunge was all over the place. I just found grunge to be a bit poseurish."

There are great lyrics on the new album, and I notice Johnny Marr plays guitar on it - do I have to make the connection or will you? "No, I'm a big fan of Morrissey's lyrics and I went after a sort of beat poetry feel on this record. I come up with the words conceptually; I think the lyrics need to lubricate the record, if you know what I mean [eh, no - BB]. This time out, though, it was different to Odelay, we actually had the melodies figured out beforehand." Midnite Vultures displays all the usual eclecticism and the around-the-musical-world-in-74 minutes feel as its predecessors. It's not so much Beck's musical taste, as his upbringing and early influences which inform his wilfully varied approach.

He grew up in a Latino suburb of Los Angeles, spent a lot of time in black areas - where he picked up on hip-hop and became a breakdancer and also lived for a while in Kansas where his (other) grandfather was a Presbyterian preacher. He briefly relocated to New York, where he became part of the East Village's "anti-folk" scene - a contemporary take on the sort of coffee bars that spawned Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. He then ended up back on Los Angeles doing Carter Family covers, before embarking on his magical mystery tour of introducing Appalachian folk to Compton hip-hop to Delta blues and Nashville country. "I would say one of the main influences, though, is Latin music, mainly because of living in east Los Angeles but that's rarely heard in my music," he says. "Away from that, though, what I do try and capture is just the notion of modern life being such a mess, especially modern urban space in the US. I mean, even driving to the supermarket and trying to find a car space is just such a human tragedy, and a comedy."

The nearest possible reference point to Beck on the musical spectrum is Prince, although that's only in terms of sheer productivity. In the same year that he released Mellow Gold, he also released Stereo Pathetic Soul Manure and One Foot In The Grave on other labels. There are in fact nine Beck albums in existence, even though most people only know of the three major label releases. "Sometimes people want the earlier stuff I did re-released, but I'm really not too keen on it. A lot of them are songs that I wrote when I was 19. I'd be playing small venues with five of my friends there, so I'd write something that I thought would amuse them."

If Mellow Gold attracted a new fan-base, then Odelay saw him go supernova. On its release, Rolling Stone magazine asked: "Could the future of rock'n'roll be a snotnosed slacker with a bad haircut, an absurdly eclectic record collection, two turntables and a microphone?" Featuring samples from sources as diverse as Schubert, Bob Dylan and Them, Beck was soon being name-checked by everyone from Noel Gallagher to Snoop Doggy Dogg.

"I saw Beck on Top Of The Pops," said ex-Velvet Underground member John Cale, "and the beauty of it hit me right between the eyes. The energy gained from seeing Beck sustained me until I could start working on my own material." And as for present-day imitators (of whom there are many), all Beck says (wryly) is "well, I'm hearing a lot more slide guitar sound these days".

So welcome, then, the "fourth" Beck album, even though it's really the tenth: "Actually I'm working backwards, this is my first album," he says, "we're in random-order time anyway. People are just going to put my CDs in a changer in random order and it'll be songs from different times. Chronology is obsolete."

Midnite Vultures by Beck is released this week on the Universal label