PHOTOS: MATTHEW BELTER | I’ll be honest with you—my roots are in rock and roll. That’s where I live, that’s where I was raised musically, and that’s the lens I’ve always brought to this work. But one thing this job has taught me, over and over again, is that great artistry doesn’t care about genre. It doesn’t care about your background, your assumptions, or the box you built for yourself before you knew better. It just grabs you. Tech N9ne grabbed me.
I reached out cold to his team, not because I had an angle or a hook, but because I kept bumping into his name in places I didn’t expect—in conversations about independent business, in discussions about vinyl culture, in rooms full of people who don’t agree on much but agree on him. Thirty-plus years in, over twenty studio albums, a label he built from nothing into the most successful independent hip-hop operation on the planet, and a fan base—the Technicians—who don’t just follow the man, they memorize him. Word for word. Breath for breath. That kind of devotion doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when the art is real.
What I found on the other end of that phone call was a man who has never once confused success with permission to stop working, never confused longevity with legacy, and never let anyone else decide what his music was allowed to be. He talks about freedom the way some people talk about survival—because for him, they’re the same thing.
This is a conversation about a Kansas City kid who turned a Slick Rick record into a chopping style the world had never heard. About parachute pants and patent leather shoes and a dance crew that went to audition for MC Hammer while he stayed back and wrote rhymes. About what it costs to build something real from nothing, and what it feels like when it works. And about vinyl—the heartbeat, as he calls it—and why a man who has earned every digital platform still looks across the room at a record and feels something no stream has ever replicated.
I think you’ll feel it too.
You’ve talked about rapping as a child just to remember how to spell your own name—but when did that innocent trick become something burning inside you, something you had to chase? What was the exact moment music stopped being something you did and started being something you were?
What it did for me on the inside—how it moved me—started early on. I was a dancer, man. Music made me want to dance. I thought I was a B-boy; break dance, pop lock, MC Hammer. I had the high-top fade with the Kwame streak, the Hammer pants, the parachute pants with the patent leather shoes with the silver on the toe. I did the whole thing.
When my homeboys in the dance crew, Imperial Prep, went to try out for the Hammer dance, I stayed back—I was the younger one in the crew. I stayed back and worked on my rhymes, and it just took over from dancing. The more I got into rhyme, the cooler I got, and I danced less. Even though I still move a bit on stage—I can’t help it—writing rhymes made me cool in a different way. When I was a dancer I’d be at all the clubs sweating through my silk shirts, but once I became an emcee I was holding up the bar. Rapping pretty much made me stop dancing as much as I did.
Before Strange Music, before the Technician army existed, you were grinding through groups like Black Mafia and Nnutthowze. Most artists erase those chapters. You’ve owned them. What did those early collectives teach you about yourself as an artist that you still carry today?
Without those people who lifted me up in the beginning, there would be no Tech N9ne. All of that was college for me—from Black Mafia with Black Walt and Icy Rock, Frozen Image, to Don Juan and Diamond Shields with Midwest Side Records. Those were the building blocks. You cannot erase your history unless you’re embarrassed of it, and I never was.
My last album, 5816 Forest, I went all the way back—Black Wall Street, 55th and Michigan, 5816 Forest, my block. All the stories are in there. I didn’t leave anything out because those experiences are the foundation of what I am today.
Your rapid-fire chopper delivery is arguably the most technically demanding vocal style in hip-hop—and you’ve been doing it for thirty-plus years without compromise. Was that always natural, or did there come a point where you had to consciously train your voice and mind like an athlete trains their body?
It was natural, and it started with Slick Rick—people think that’s weird, but it’s true. He had a song where he was doing this style, a kind of Jamaican toasting—”don’t worry about the thing because Ricky Rick is bringing home the goods”—slow and melodic like that. You hear it in Shabba Ranks, in certain soul records. Slick Rick did it slow.
I started speeding it up. “Don’t worry about the thing” became faster and faster until it turned into chopping. That’s when I first started speeding it up, way back in my junior high school days.
Strange Music is widely regarded as the greatest independent hip-hop label ever built—over two million albums sold, a roster that feels like a family, and a business model that basically rewrote the rules. Looking back at that 1999 handshake with Travis O’Guin, did you two actually believe you could build something that would outperform major labels on your own terms, or were you just too stubborn to take no for an answer?
Stubborn. We knew we had something special, but we had no idea we’d become the number one independent label in the world. What me and Travis have in common is: do the work, keep your head down. Then we’d look up and go, “Whoa, we got plaques. Whoa, we got money. Okay—keep working, keep your head down.” Nothing is written in blood, but we knew we had something special, and we still do, and we’re still working exactly that way.
We didn’t know who was going to like it. I believed I was the complete technique of rhyme, but I still mixed so many genres with hip-hop that people didn’t always agree. It didn’t stop me. When something popped—like “Hood Go Crazy,” which went gold and platinum—some artists would just keep doing that and push everything else aside. I kept doing songs like “The Beast” too. Now I have a platinum plaque for “Worldwide Choppers” without a video or radio play. I just kept doing everything, even when people didn’t agree. You just have to make the art. I write my life, so that’s what it is.
Your guest list reads like a fever dream—Corey Taylor, The Doors, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Serj Tankian, and Dwayne Johnson. Is there a collaboration that surprised you—where you got into the studio and found a connection you genuinely didn’t see coming?
Being the odd guy out, the weirdo, the strange music maker—you never think people outside your bubble are paying attention. When I was invited to do the Sway in the Morning anthem in 1999 and I saw KRS-One come up and shake my hand like he knew me, and Eminem did the same—everyone on that roster knew who I was. I was flabbergasted, because I’m in my bubble, my Strange Music bubble.
Whenever I got a feature—from Ice Cube to Snoop Dogg to Kendrick to Lil Wayne to TI to Wiz Khalifa to Eminem—I’m always surprised and always pleased, because it’s always just been me with my ideas. When Kendrick Lamar told me “Fragile was dope” on the video set, that’s big coming from Kendrick. For Eminem to say yes without any pay, that’s a major compliment. It’s validating. Even though I don’t seek validation from anyone—that is truly validating.
Your 2025 album 5816 Forest brought us “Yoda” with Lil Wayne—two of rap’s most technically elite voices on one track. What was the energy in that creative space like?
I wrote “Yoda” while I was on tour with Falling in Reverse (Ronnie Radke and his band), Dance Gavin Dance, and Black Veil Brides. I wrote it on my bus at night after my show. It was the hardest song I’ve ever written in my entire career because I had to talk backwards like Yoda and make it rhyme. After I got through the first verse I hated myself—I was like, “Holy—and I’m doing three verses. Why did I do this to myself?”
Once I finished, I knew I wanted Wayne on the hook. I sent it to him and he did it immediately. Then we shot the video, and Wayne didn’t arrive until 3 in the morning—I’d been there since 10 PM. When he finally showed up, we shot it like we’d been rehearsing together the whole time. He knew a lot of my lyrics, I knew his hook, and we knocked it out in about five shots. It was perfect, man.
The Strange Wid’ It Tour co-headlining with E-40 is firing up across 27 dates this spring. You two have history on tracks like “No K,” but there’s a difference between a verse together and locking in night after night on the same stage. What makes E-40 the right person to share that headline spotlight with right now, in this moment?
I found out that we’re kinfolk—and we’re both Scorpios, November babies. Other than being relatives and Scorpios, we’re both pioneers of independence in this rap game, so it makes sense. This isn’t even the first time we’ve toured together; we toured years ago and it was really lucrative.
When they suggested we do it again, here we are—this time actually aware that we’re family. The first tour we didn’t know. Now that we know, it’s going to be even better: kinfolk and pioneers in the game. It makes sense.
Technicians are famously among the most die-hard fan bases in the game—they know every word, every breath, every drop. After thirty-plus years of touring, how do you keep the show feeling like it means something on night twenty-two of a run versus night one? What’s the internal ritual that keeps the performance honest?
The energy from the crowd is different every night—they give you the energy; you give it back. Even if their energy is off, you still have to push. But honestly, my music is impossible to slouch on. You cannot not push on “Einstein.” You cannot not push on “Straight Out the Gate,” “Riot Maker,” or “Hood Go Crazy”—these are up songs. They demand everything you’ve got.
The crowd’s energy gives you confidence, happiness, ease. When the energy is up, everything flows.
Strange Music has put out vinyl editions of records like Special Effects, Something Else, Strangeulation, and most recently 5816 Forest—often in colored and limited pressings. When you hold one of your own albums on wax, does it feel different than hearing it back on a stream or a CD? Is there a pressing that genuinely moved you the first time you dropped the needle on it?
It feels special on vinyl. I’m looking at Fragile’s vinyl right now. That’s how we began—since the days of the Victrola. Vinyl means this is a special piece of work recorded on something vintage, and that’s why it’s still here, still important. Getting the test press in and listening to make sure everything is right—that’s a beautiful feeling.
If I had to pick one pressing that was truly special—the artwork, the fold-out—it’s Something Else. When you unfold it, it is genuinely a gift. I have a few at my home. The artwork, the way it folds out, the color—we used everything. Vinyl is the heartbeat of music. It reminds me of analog thickness, that warmth and heaviness of the instruments. Digital has its place—we have an SSL board so we can do both—but sometimes I tell my engineer Ben, we need to go back and do this album analog. We need that thickness. There’s something about vinyl that reminds you of how it should sound.
Hip-hop was literally born on vinyl—DJs pulling breaks, sampling records, building entire art forms out of a needle in a groove. As someone who came up in that culture and is now releasing your own wax decades later, what does it mean to you personally that hip-hop and vinyl are still intertwined? Is pressing a record still a statement, or has it become nostalgia?
It’s both—it’s nostalgic and it’s here forever. It’s for keepsake. People are always going to want something physical, and that physical piece will be here long after us.
It’s tangible. And if you have something to play it on—something vintage enough to play it on—that makes it even better. Finding a 45 and a 45 player? Holy shit.
There’s a generation of independent artists right now—across hip-hop, rock, metal, everything—who point to you and Strange Music as proof that you don’t need a major label to build something real and lasting. Do you feel the weight of that? And is there anything about what you built that you wish you could go back and tell your younger self, so he could appreciate it while it was happening?
We were among the first independents to stick our necks out—doing our own merch, our own tours, our own records, our own everything. Not the only ones—Psychopathic Records was out there too, independent before they signed with anyone. But we were early, losing money, then gaining it back, showing the artists who were scared to do it, and chasing major label deals, that there was another way.
If I could go back and talk to my younger self, I’d say: don’t change a thing. Go through everything you went through—the deal with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis at Perspective, the A&M deal, the ’97 situation with Warner and Quincy Jones, the ’98-’99 run with Interscope. Do all of it. Do all that stuff that built you up so you have all this to talk about. Meet Travis, do everything the same. Because we’re still here because of all that.
When the last record is pressed and the last show is done—when someone a hundred years from now pulls a Tech N9ne album out of a crate at a record fair and drops the needle—what do you want them to feel? Not what do you want them to think about you as a rapper or a businessman—what’s the human truth you’ve been trying to communicate all along?
I want them to feel that I was free to do every type of music I was influenced by and put it within my hip-hop. I want them to know that I had no barriers, no ceilings, no one telling me no. I want them to feel my freedom. That’s what I want.
