Adam Popescu from Smashd recently conducted an interview with Tech N9ne.

In this interview Tech N9ne discusses a plethora of topics including the difficultly of being an independent artist, Strange Music bring in 20 million dollars a year, and more.

You can check out the full interview below.

If you cut open the body of America — Kansas City, Missouri might just be its beating heart. The country’s geographic center, “Paris of the Plains” is home to true Americana, birthing everything from blues and barbeque to some of entertainment’s greatest—if not most varied—names.

From the legendary saxophonist Charlie Parker, to the foul-mouthed comic Eddie Griffin, auteur filmmaker Robert Altman, and early Hollywood moll Jean Harlow, Kansas City gave us Disney, Eminem, Hemingway, and Cronkite.

One of today’s biggest, and most polarizing, is a native son known for a Viking-like red beard, face paint, and gale force lyrics. His name is Aaron Yates, but the world knows him as Tech N9ne, a rapper who spent years cultivating an underground following before achieving mainstream acclaim.

Forbes has named him one of the world’s top-selling rappers, but for years success eluded him.

Major labels didn’t know what to do with Tech N9ne. Mix his look and lyrics—dark psyche, a toe in every genre from metal and punk to gangster rap—he’s hard to classify, and until recently, way too left-of-center for radio.

But he’s been dedicated to breaking through.

In 1999, he co-founded his own label, Strange Music with Travis O’Guin. His business has blossomed into a bona fide cash cow, selling millions of albums, merchandise, and tickets, with Tech morphing from black sheep to impresario.

A few days before his Royals won the World Series, and on the heels of his new Strangeulation collabo project, we spoke about his art, longevity, and his love for The Doors.

Q: How difficult is it to be an independent artist today?
Tech N9ne: I started off in 1993 with the majors. I knew back then that I couldn’t be a clone. Labels want you to duplicate what’s hot already. I’ve always been to the left, I want to stand out. Beard red, spiked hair, face paint, the ambidextrous style. Left, right, up, down.

They had no idea what to do with this black guy with red spiked hair. Who’s ever seen anything like that? They couldn’t place my music. I can’t blame them.

I knew I had to do something that would allow me to have complete autonomy. Meeting Travis O’Guin, he had the ambition to do an independent label. I was ready to show the world how you place Tech N9ne. You place him everywhere.

This last album I did, “Special Effects,” that lineup means validation. I finally got that verse with Eminem. If you want the hilt of EDM, Excision is there. If you want the hilt of trap, T.I. does a song. If you want the hype club-banger, 2Chainz and B.O.B. is on “Hood Go Crazy.” You got Yo Gotti and Lil Wayne. That album is showing—late in a career—that we can go every direction. The majors didn’t know what to do with me. They didn’t know how to let me do my thing.

I wanted to work with Eminem for 10 years. I didn’t know he would do it—I didn’t know if he had ever heard my name. That album was done for free when it comes to artists, and these are major artists. You know how much an Eminem verse costs, and it’s like love, just give me one [verse]. Or Corey Taylor says we’ll do something else [with you], we love you; 2Chainz [says] no, we love you; Wayne, no, we love you; T.I., [says] no, we love you. Love, love, love, and it lets me know I’ve been doing it right this whole time.

Q: With the business so different now, if you were starting today, in your early 20s instead of your early 40s, could you have had the same success?

Tech N9ne: No, because I would have had to have gone through all that bullshit to make me want to do an independent label.

All those failures, bleeps, and blunders to be able to say “I don’t want that anymore, this is how we should do it.”

If I was 20 right now, it would be easier for me—to be known, if I was just starting.

Q: But maybe not as easy to make money?
Tech N9ne: As far as getting paid, it would be more frustrating, because streaming services are giving pennies to the artists.

It wouldn’t be the Eminem success, the Cash Money success, those thick, dollar deals—it wouldn’t be that, because music is damn near free. Touring, touching people in every town, spiritually, I would have to get on the road like we did. B-Real from Cypress Hill told me years ago in Switzerland, backstage at Rock The Bells, he said “one thing they can’t take away is the live shows, merchandise, all that.”

Q: You’re one of the top earning rappers in the game—$20 million per year, crazy money—did you ever think that was possible in your wildest dreams?
Tech N9ne: I knew I had something special. I did not know I was going to be the number one independent rapper in the world. I did not.

Not this little ole’ ghetto boy from Wayne Miner Projects. No. Not in a million. That list just came out again, and there was like 55 people, and I was like “wow, I’m number one again.” Still, this late in life, no, not in my wildest dreams.

When I get off tour and I walk into this brand new $3.3 million home, and it’s mine, I’m tripping out. It’s all blossoming. All this work for all these years, people calling me a devil worshipper for my imagery, putting up roadblocks, they wouldn’t put me on the radio—now, all them muthafuckas is playing my songs.

Q: What’s your take on the game right now? Is it exhausting to compete with so many young guys?
Tech N9ne: How’s it a young man’s game when the muthafuckas making all the money, besides Drake, are in their 40s and late 30s? Eminem, Jay Z, 50 Cent, Ludacris, Tech N9ne. Who the young muthafuckas? You’ve seen the Forbes list. When you say it’s a young man’s game, yeah, if you’re trying to sell singles. I’m talking about longevity.

I ain’t a hatin’ ass nigga. I understand what Fetty Wap is, and that’s fine, the nigga knows melody and harmony. Muthafuckas is trying to put all rappers in the same box. We can’t do that. There’s a lane for everybody.

When I look at the game and I see young muthafuckas coming up like Kendrick Lamar, Jay Rock, whoever, I see people taking care of their children. All I want for these guys is to be here as long as I’ve been, because I feel like Dracula. A lot of muthafuckas ain’t here no more. I miss the Wu-Tang albums. I miss 50 Cent’s shit. I’ve been here during the rise and fall of a lot of y’all, and when I’m done—no time soon—I wish artists get that longevity juice so they can keep taking care of their loved ones. I know E-40 has it, Jay Z has it, Nas, Drake, Eminem, there’s some who have that longevity juice. If you don’t, get in real quick, get that money, and put it into something else. We still sell the music, but we going in other directions: liquor, car washes, we thinking about the future.

Q: What’s your secret to keeping your breath control to rap so fast?
Tech N9ne: We practice. I have a partner with me on stage, Krizz Kaliko. We write for the live shows, we write to breathe—you know when you’re about to lose your breath. And I breathe so I can say the next rhyme. I write like that, to perform live—we try our best to give our fans exactly how the music sounds.

If I do “Fragile,” and it doesn’t sound like the radio, when I’m in the studio, I’m going to do it exactly the tone I had on the mic. Practice makes perfect. We rehearse, we write, and we count our breaths.

Q: What’s the strangest thing about your label Strange Music?
Tech N9ne: The way we carry ourselves on tour: No weed, no drugs, we try not to cuss at shows. You’d think it was a Christian label. No alcohol for the crew, not even on an off day. We as men abuse our privileges. We abuse everything. When I was doing ecstasy on the road, I was almost dying. Fifteen pills in one day.

I used to be on drugs back in the day. Ecstasy, shrooms, acid, GHB, molly, everything, and I’ve been clean for almost 11 years. Vitamin B12 gives me a feeling of that molly. I take it like an hour before the show, put it under my tongue for 30 seconds, and when I get my face painted, my face starts tingling. I turn into this beast that has no fear.

Q: The Doors influenced the label’s name, and you’ve worked with the surviving members. If Jim Morrison was still alive, what would you want to say to him?
Tech N9ne: Jim said something at the end of “Strange Days:” “As we run, from the day, to a strange night of stone.”

When I asked Ray Manzarek, before he passed, what that meant, he said “I don’t know man, you gotta ask him.”

I went to his gravesite in Paris. I told him [Jim Morrison] thank you for the inspiration to inspire me to do this label. It wouldn’t be called Strange if I wasn’t a humongous Doors fan.

Q: If Jim rose from the grave and you did a new song, what would that be like?
Tech N9ne: We would do Spanish Caravan. I got an idea to freak that beat, and I’d write the words—well, maybe he’d write the words, you can’t write for Jim Morrison. That would be offensive. [Laughs]. We would do Spanish Caravan, we would freak it, like Jay Dilla would an old break, we’d freak it like that. Spanish Caravan.

Contributors:

• Steven Eli

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