Images by Ari Michelson

On a rather hot April afternoon in Lawrence, Kansas, Mother Nature’s heat is no match for the small army of eager fans waiting in line to shake hands with their favorite underground MC, Tech N9ne. The iconoclastic, Kansas City, Missouri–born vice president of Strange Music, a hugely successful independent Midwest rap label currently celebrating its 10th anniversary, soon struts in sporting an outfit of his traditional colors of black, red and white, with pitch-black wraparound sunglasses.

Five hours before showtime, the predominantly White group of about 30 Strange Music aficionados, all gripping V.I.P. passes, crowds into the lobby of Lawrence’s Liberty Hall, which doubles as a two-screen independent movie theater and a 1,050-capacity concert venue. Tech, the man of the hour, gets ready to pose for a picture with an excited fan. She’s just gotten her second Tech tat—it’s his name, and it’s inked on the back of her neck. Tech strikes a pose, pretending to lick the new art, as her male friend snaps a photo.

If she ever e-mails her new photo to Strange Music’s headquarters, in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, the pic will join the label’s ever-growing collection of over 3,600 snapshots of Strange Music–related body art (SM and Tech logos, Tech’s portrait, etc.) sent in by diehard fans.

Tech N9ne and his Strange Music cohorts aren’t exactly household names—hell, they aren’t even big hip-hop names. But the Kansas City–based company has carved one hell of a niche for itself out of the independent-music market. Rigorous touring (204 shows in 2009, 202 in 2008, 196 in 2007), a steady stream of album releases, incessant self-promotion and merchandising, plus close interaction with SM’s dedicated fans have set it apart from other indie outfits.

Onstage, Tecca Nina provides a theatrical balance of showmanship and lyrical wizardry, wearing his signature white face paint during every show, while roaring through 100-plus minutes of high-octane performance alongside his hype men, and fellow Strange Music artists, Krizz Kaliko and Kutt Calhoun. True friends to their fans, Tech and crew hold hour-long V.I.P. meet-and-greets before every show, for 30 to 300 fans, during which, for $99, prepurchased-pass wearers can take pictures, get autographs and talk with all of the Strange artists, as well as walk away with $200 worth of merchandise (posters, T-shirts, dog tags, CD samplers).

“I’m trying to be the hip-hop president,” says Tech (a.k.a. Aaron Yates), 38. “I’m gathering fans up under everybody’s nose… [We] understand that it’s a campaign. During a campaign, you have to get out there and touch the people. We’re not on TV and radio, so we have to find a way to touch these people, let them know that we’re real.”

As real as it gets, frankly. While the music industry as a whole continues to sweat bullets over shrinking profits, Strange Music has watched its finances steadily increase. Touring has generated large dividends. When ticket and merchandise sales are added up, SM’s concert intake ranges from $25,000 to $125,000 a night. Last year alone, the label pulled in just under $15 million, showing growth from the $11 million it earned in 2008. “We’re doing all this during the decline of the music business, along with catastrophic financial devastation of the markets and everything else,” says Strange Music CEO/President Travis O’Guin, 38. “And we’re having a ball. Somehow we’re recession-proof, and it freaks me out a little bit sometimes. But I’m confident that we have it figured out.”

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Images by Ari Michelson

For Tech N9ne, Strange Music began out of necessity. With street records (such as “Let’s Get Fucked Up”) igniting his buzz in Kansas City in the early 1990s, the then-unknown Tech soon attracted interest from major labels. In 1993, the upstart rhyme slinger inked a deal with the now-defunct Perspective Records, headed by superproducers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis (known for their hits with Janet Jackson, Usher and Mary J. Blige). Three years of inactivity, however, led to Tech’s 1997 exit to Quincy Jones’s Qwest imprint, which was under Warner Bros. Tech relocated to L.A. to work with the legendary producer, but his musical output on Qwest was nil.

Looking for an effective outlet to showcase his unique artistry (hip-hop-styled lyricism, dark beats tinged with rock sensibilities, and provocative content), a frustrated Tech returned to Kansas City. While performing at a local fashion show in 1998, he caught the attention of O’Guin, a young, monetarily strong entrepreneur known for lucrative ventures, including a fashion company (Paradise Apparel Group Inc.) and a furniture repair company (Furniture Works Inc.). A meeting was arranged. “I was thinking, Maybe I can give him some business advice,” recalls O’Guin, a lifelong hip-hop fan who became a self-made millionaire at age 22. “It was just a big mess. A lot of people had seen the talent in Tech and tried to attach themselves to it. They didn’t really have his best interests in mind; they had their own.”

O’Guin believed in Tech’s talent enough to devote more than a year to negotiations with Quincy Jones and Warner Bros., dedicated to getting Tech out of his contracts. O’Guin won, and soon he and Tech launched their own record label in a 50/50 partnership, completely out of pocket. A huge fan of seminal rock group The Doors, Tech took one of his favorite Doors songs, 1967’s “People Are Strange,” and came up with the company moniker, Strange Music. With such an unclassifiable artist as its flagship MC, the company’s title was apt. “The mentality was, ‘Okay, let’s just show these labels that there is a market for clusterfucks,’” says Tech.

By August 2001, Strange Music’s first release, and Tech’s debut, Anghellic, was put out through a distribution deal with JCOR Entertainment, a no-longer-in-existence indie label that also released LPs from Brooklyn MC O.C. and southern legends 8Ball & MJG. The LP sold over 20,000 copies in its first week, an impressive feat for an unknown rapper from an untapped locale. Dipping into their own pockets, Tech and O’Guin promoted the album by wrapping their own vans and driving city to city in the Midwest to plaster posters everywhere. Says O’Guin, “All those tools that we still use today [on tour]—samplers, flatbeds, flyers, posters—is how we started this whole thing.”

While O’Guin and company were hustling, JCOR, they felt, wasn’t delivering on dollar-signed promises. In 2002, Strange Music switched distributors for Tech’s next album, Absolute Power, moving over to M.S.C. Music, a boutique company started by former Priority Records co-founder Mark Cerami. There, in a 50/50 joint venture, the flip side occurred: M.S.C. was overspending. “[Cerami] did things like throwing too much money at radio, to the tune of $1.6 million, and we’re responsible for half of every one of those dollars,” says O’Guin. “We thought, We’re never gonna make any money if we keep throwing money out the window like this.”

Over the next four years, Strange, as a whole, sold over 500,000 albums, between Tech’s two solo LPs and three full-lengths (all released in 2004) from Kutt Calhoun (B.L.E.V.E.), Project: Deadman (Self Inflicted) and Skatterman & Snug Brim (Urban Legendz).

In 2006, the final shift came, when Strange Music linked with Universal-backed Fontana for its distribution. To this day, SM has handled all facets of business—everything from the printing of CDs to promotions. “That’s when it got fun,” says O’Guin, referring to the Fontana connection made four years ago. “That’s when we turned the corner. Now we have nobody in between us and our money. We are the decision makers.” — Matt Barone

To read the rest of this feature story, be sure to pick up the July/August issue, which is on stands now.

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