His rap moniker is a reference to his ability – a corruption of Technique Number Nine – rather than the Tec-9 handgun of gangsta rap lore, and he shares with some of his midwestern peers a flair for high-speed, machine-gun-syllable rapping. His sound mixes gritty, sometimes rock-based beats with gothic keyboards and atmospheres, and his often confessional lyrics appeal strongly to emo and metal fans. It helps, of course, that Tech N9ne makes music with the potential to reach a huge audience. Growing under the media radar, selling DVDs rather than having videos plastered all over MTV, playing 200 gigs a year and taking his bizarre music and hyperactive stage show to parts of the country his contemporaries don't bother with, Tech and co have built a multi-million-dollar business that is geographically, financially and philosophically set apart from the rest of the music industry.īut that industry is finally starting to take notice. It's like a glimpse into a parallel universe, where hard work has trumped the hype machine. The battle plan includes sorties to no fewer than three Alaskan cities, but Hawaii is a problem: the islands' main promoter is worried that rabid Tech N9ne fans will cause a riot should he ever play a show there. Away from the tour itinerary, other cities are circled: places Tech has never been, but where the Strange Music mail-order team have noticed clusters of shirt-buying fans or where he's already established, but hasn't played for a while. In chinagraph pencil markings, the rapper's last US tour is plotted in military detail, taking in remote cities in Montana, Idaho, Nebraska – the kinds of places most artists never visit. Even if it's two people in the audience when we go over there, fuck it."ĭownstairs, in the Kansas City offices of Tech's Strange Music label, there's a wipe-clean map of the United States tacked to the wall. We haven't done a seven in a long time, but I could still do a seven. It's wonderful to see it grow like that – and that's what we're gonna have to do in Europe. The next time, it was 500 – now we sell out the House of Blues there. We performed like it was 7,000 people, so when we came back, word of mouth meant we played to 100 people. "The first show we did in San Diego, seven people came. "My quest has always been to get my story to the rest o' the people," the 37-year-old Aaron Yates explains, gently stroking his beard. Yet you've almost certainly never heard of Tech N9ne – and that, you sense, is quite exciting to him. He has shifted more than a million albums and co-owns a record label that may well be the most successful music business of its day. He's the biggest-selling independent rapper in the US, and in 2008, Kanye West and Jay-Z were the only hip-hop artists to make more money from touring.
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