Saturation. That’s all Tech N9ne really wants.
The self-made, underground MC from Kansas City, Mo., wants to be recognized by everyone in the world as one of hip-hop’s rising stars. And while he has a long way to go, he has a solid start.
“I won’t stop until everybody is up on Tech N9ne,” the MC told The Denver Post earlier this week before launching his 52-date Fire and Ice Tour tonight at the Fillmore Auditorium.
“Even people who don’t listen to rap music, those bluegrass fans know Eminem and 50 Cent’s names, and that’s where I want to be.”
N9ne, born Aaron Dontez Yates, doesn’t lack ambition. But the rapper — and friend/collaborator to the Insane Clown Posse — isn’t a superstar MC just yet. His numbers are impressive, with millions of MySpace plays, skyrocketing attendance figures at his many concerts and nearly 1 million albums sold on his own imprint, Strange Music.
And N9ne did it all the old-fashioned way: spreading the gospel via restless touring. N9ne plays 200 dates a year. (The 52 dates of his current tour will be handled in less than two calendar months, allowing for very few days off.) And his popularity — a.k.a. saturation — has seen steady growth over the years, a trend that got a little bump from a stint with the Insane Clown Posse, whose fans (known as Juggalos) took to N9ne’s angular rhyme schemes and big, Southern beats.
“And just imagine where I’d be if I was on the radio,” N9ne said.
Making his success even more impressive, N9ne has gotten to where he is mostly without the help of radio. Denver surpassed Kansas City as the MC’s largest market for record and ticket sales, he said, but he’s nowhere to be heard on local hip-hop station KQKS-107.5/FM.
“The thing about it is, Tech N9ne has radio-playable music,” N9ne said, acknowledging that some of his songs are hyper-violent. “If it’s about payola, that’s cool. But what happened to the days of people hearing what they want to hear?
“In Denver, they want to hear me. Denver is like my second home. I’ve always said that. I’ve got a girl there. It’s crazy how all the fans receive me there, without any radio play even.”
Talking to N9ne earlier this week, he was in the studio for one final day of recording and mixing on his next record, the double-LP “Killer.” With 32 songs, the title boasts that the record is all killer, no filler, N9ne said. He recorded the entire record in less than a month, a feat that wouldn’t have been possible two years ago, when he was abusing Ecstasy regularly.
“I’ve been clean for almost two years now, but Ecstasy used to make me do some stupid stuff to people who I love,” N9ne said. “That’s how I lost my wife. She didn’t want to be with a junkie, with somebody who was reckless. We’re still good friends, and we have two little girls together, but drugs had me coming home the next morning, and you can’t keep a woman like that.”
As N9ne’s fan base has expanded, it has also grown in diversity. N9ne has those he calls “my people, the black folk,” and they’re joined at his shows by the hip- hop-loving preppies, the Juggalos and the metalheads who are drawn to the rock ‘n’ roll nature of N9ne’s production.
“It’s great, but it’s not always easy, man,” N9ne said of the mixture of people at his shows. “A lot of my people ask me, ‘Man, Tech, why do you have so many ICP fans at your shows?’ I tell them, ‘They’re a part of the human body. Everybody here is.’ The Juggalos respect my music as much as the next guy. And I have as much in common with the Juggalos as I do the preppies and the metalheads. I’m all that in one.”
N9ne is a straightforward talker in his music as much as his real life. In the course of a 30-minute interview with a reporter he’d never met, he talked extensively about his history of drug abuse, his daughter’s ninth birthday (and how he hadn’t yet called her that day), his desire to be ubiquitous, his past spent trashing hotel rooms and dressing rooms, and his insecurities surrounding his music.
“I’m inside out,” he said. “My music is like me, and I’m an emotional roller coaster. That’s the beauty of being Tech N9ne. I get to be me. It’s my life as I know it. And people want to pay to see that and hear that on my CDs. And what’s most amazing: The more I am myself, the more people want to come and see me. It’s not fabricated.”
For now, N9ne is content with selling out venues such as the Fillmore, an impressive 3,600-capacity space. But he has his sights set on much larger goals.
“My quest is to get my music to the rest of the world,” he said. “It’s been spreading to L.A., Seattle, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. There’s no way that I’m not doing shows in Europe now. I’ve done Denmark and Australia and New Zealand, and now Japan is calling. I’m trying to make it to where I can’t go anywhere — Athens or Japan or Sri Lanka — without getting recognized.”
Ricardo Baca: 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com
Tech N9ne
Rap. Fillmore Auditorium, 1510 Clarkson St., with Paul Wall, Ill Bill and DJ Stupac. Tonight. 8 p.m. $28-$32. ticketmaster , 303-830-8497.
