It’s been almost exactly 10 years since Tech N9ne made his groundbreaking appearance on Sway and King Tech’s “The Anthem”, immediately preceding Eminem with a verse that put the rapidly rising superstar to shame. Unfortunately, he never gained the notoriety that Em did, however he has amassed a cult following of loyal fans and branded himself as the brutally honest wildin’ out rock star of the hip hop underground. He recently reached a milestone in his career by independently moving one million units without the aid of national TV and radio exposure, but Tech isn’t satisfied. The fans love his music for it’s raw honesty and he’s convinced that the rest of the world would feel the same way. Superstardom has it’s consequences and Tech is prepared to accept them. I sat down with him behind the scenes at Paid Dues to discuss the motivation behind his music, his upcoming projects and his plans to give them a broader reach.
It seems like you incorporate a lot of rock elements into your music. Did you grow up a rock fan?
I love rock. I grew up in a family that was diverse – my mother and grandmother and aunties and uncles. My mom and aunt were very Christian. My uncles were into rap and one of them was into rock – stuff like Led Zeppelin, Grateful Dead, all that kind of stuff. I wasn’t closed into a certain type of music. It was everything, and that’s what I turned into. I turned into everything that they instilled in to me. That’s why you hear that rock energy. Because [I’ve always had] an ear for stuff like The Doors, and I still have an ear for stuff like Slipknot and System of a Down and Shine Down… stuff like that. So you’ll hear a lot of those elements within our hip hop.
You’ve said before you wanted to work with Corey from Slipknot…
Yeah, I’m gonna try to do that on this KOD album that’s coming out October 27.
Have you heard anything from him yet?
No we haven’t pursued it yet because I’m only five beats in, so I’m waiting for the right beat to hear him on, and I don’t just want to put him on anything. I actually want him to sing a chorus for me.
So is anybody locked down for the album yet?
No not yet. We haven’t started yet. We’ve only got five beats and I’ve done three songs thus far out of the five. So I need that thing, you know what I’m saying? [Laughs] I need those extra beats.
You said you grew up in a Christian household. It’s interesting because there’s a song on the album where it seems you kind of dispel the beliefs of Christianity.
“Hope for a Higher Power”? Well just the mythical magical stuff that man wrote.
Yeah that’s the line I was thinking of.
I know that a lot of, or all of, [the Bible] was written by man. So I wanna believe in a higher power. I wanna believe that someone’s listening when I’m praying. I wanna believe it but I don’t have no proof – like when you look at how Scarface said “how do you explain the sun the stars and the moon?” Then you have the atheists that believe that everything grew like a plant, you know what I’m sizzlin’? and then you have other people who think that we were created by a higher power. I wanna believe it because that’s what I was raised to believe. But as you get older you start questioning your beliefs and you start wondering why everybody’s dying around you and why would a higher power let that happen. It’s supposed to be the ultimate good. So I think we are all just a little confused. In my music I like to let you know if I’m confused or if I understand and that’s why I wrote “Hope For A Higher Power.” That’s why I said “hope” you know what I’m sizzlin’? because we are hoping, because we are naturally good people. You feel me?
So do you believe in a higher power?
Yeah I do. That’s why I hope that it’s correct, because nobody knows for sure. I believe there is a reason that I have this talent. You’ve got people that say “he was born with it.” Maybe I was. It’s in my veins, it had to be given to me somehow. I know my family instilled all that rhythm and stuff in to me and then I capitalized on it, but what they taught me was that there was a thing called God, and another thing called Jesus. I’ve been waiting to see something supernatural – that’ll let me know. People say they’ve seen ghosts. I haven’t seen no ghosts. I’ve gone to haunted places – places people say are haunted that have a “presence” there – and I’ve sat there in the dark and seen if I can feel or see anything. I’m not worried about death or nothing like that. I ain’t never seen nothing move and I’ve looked for it. Insane asylums that have burnt down – where people been tortured – I go, and I’ve never seen anything. I ain’t seen nothing but human beings. I’ve never seen anything higher. I don’t have no proof. If I ever saw [something higher] maybe I’d change my way of thought. My music would change drastically. The fans probably wouldn’t like that.
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