Warning: This story contains spoilers for Power Book III: Raising Kanan season 4.

Joey Bada$$ is a different man onscreen in Power Book III: Raising Kanan season 4.

After his character Unique made a shocking resurrection in the season 3 finale after being left for dead by his brother Ronnie (Grantham Coleman), the rapper, 30, tells PEOPLE that Unique is not who fans know him to be this time around.

“We’re used to seeing Unique in a certain light, and it was dope to be like, okay, let me reimagine this character a little bit,” he shares. “Let’s take the calm, charismatic, well-calculated fly dude, and let’s make him unhinged.”

He says it was “really fun to portray” a totally new side to the character, especially after four years of playing the drug kingpin.

“It felt different, but it was also very exciting,” he says of getting to put “new accents” on a character he’s so familiar with. He adds, “It was definitely a challenge that I was ready for.”

In the first episode of season 4, fans were privy to the weeks in between what seemed like Unique’s death and the reveal that he’s actually alive, which came after he found his brother Ronnie dead thanks to Kanan (Mekai Curtis) in the season 3 finale.

The rapper says that his character is “in a space where he hasn’t communicated with anybody, and he’s left alone to his thoughts, and then as he kind of starts to creep back out into the real world, to kind of get a recon on what’s going on, he’s seeing it from the wrong perspective and it’s informing his decision-making in the wrong way.”

Unique is “not thinking clearly” this season, he continues, “and he’s somehow convinced himself that everybody conspired against him,” so he’s “full of revenge.”

To his credit, though, as Joey says, “at least he was smart enough to be like, ‘yeah, I’m going to just play dead'” while he gets his ducks in a row.

“But I don’t think he was able to put into perspective that things change, once somebody is out the picture. And the perspective could be skewed, if you’re not privy to those changes.”

Creator Sascha Penn told PEOPLE after the season 3 finale aired last February that it was “not an insignificant adjustment” to bring Unique into the story again in season 4. His death had originally stemmed from a scheduling conflict, the rapper told PEOPLE, as he couldn’t be in “two places at once” and had a prior commitment to go on tour in winter 2022.

“I had said to Joey early on when he said that he was done, ‘Look, I have to be honest, this type of role, this type of opportunity, can happen once in a lifetime.’ And that’s not me patting myself and the other writers on the show on the back. He took this thing and turned it into something iconic. That doesn’t always happen for an actor. I felt like, wow, to walk away from this is tough,” Penn said of Joey’s decision to exit.

Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, who played Kanan Stark in the original Power series, also spoke to Joey about the decision, Penn said. “And ultimately, Joey figured it out, and we were all able to accommodate it and I think the show was far, far, far better for it.”

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New episodes of Power Book III: Raising Kanan premiere Thursdays at 12 a.m. ET on Starz.