TECH N9NE (March 2009) | Interview By: Jose Ho-Guanipa

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Interview was conducted in March 2009
 

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Tech N9ne // Exclusive Video Interview // Dubcnn

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Tech N9ne: Yo this be the one them call Tech n9ne, right here on Dubcnn, act like ya knew it.

Kutt Calhoun: Your right to the left up is ya boy Kutt Calhoun aka the Kansas City Chief, rockin’ it real big here on Dubcnn , all day all day.

Krizz Kaliko: The genius, genius, Krizz Kaliko, in the building man Kansas City, Missouri stand up, Kali baby.

Dubcnn: Guys this is Jose with Dubcnn I’m here with Tech N9ne, Kutt Calhoun, and Krizz Kaliko, and we’re at the Paid Dues Festival in San Bernandino, Calfiornia, and everyone’s just chillin’, we’re just chillin’. First off you just dropped “Sickology 101”.

Tech N9ne: It ain’t came out yet, it comes out April 28th.


Dubcnn: April 28th, okay, it’s about to drop. But you also have another album coming out, the Halloween album. Can you tell us a little something about that?

Tech N9ne: “K.O.D.”, “K.O.D.“. Yeah man, I just purchased 5 beats for it, so I need at least 15 more and it’s gonna be really sick and twisted. I can’t tell you what K.O.D. stands for cause’ we’re doing a contest to see who can guess it. Once you hear some of the music you’ll understand the direction it’s going in and maybe you’ll be able to guess it. I don’t know. But I can’t wait to use my imagination.


Dubcnn: So how are these two albums different form the last one “Killer”?

Tech N9ne: “Killer”, if you’re hip to Tech N9ne you know I write my life. “Killer” was a lot of my life. When I’m partying, when I’m sad, when I’m mad, when I’m confused. And the same thing goes for “Sickology 101” you know. I get to rap and do me, do my life. With “K.O.D.” I get to use a lot of my imagination. I get to see how wild my imagination can go with “K.O.D.”, and that’s what’s gonna make it different from all my other works of art.


Dubcnn: What are the statuses on some of the guest appearances you’re trying to get? I know you sent Jay-Z a track and wanted him to get on a track.

Tech N9ne: I wanted to get Jay-Z on “Sickology” for the track but I happened to run into some 19 year-old cats that happened to be in the studio and they started bustin’ on the track. I was like, “Wow”. The object is to get new cats, and it would’ve been harder for me to get to Jay-Z, I don’t know if he would’ve did it. I didn’t actually reach out to him on that one. Because I heard him when I heard the track. When I listen to music I don’t just do music with people just to get em’ on my albums so it’ll sell. I do music with people that I think do wonderful things lyrically, and musically. So if I think Jay-Z; this is me thinking as an artist, “Wow he’ll sound wonderful on that”. But somebody else came through and blessed it, young cats by the name of Craig Smith and Nesto. You know what I mean. It’s a wonderful thing. “K.O.D.” man it’s gonna be hard for me to do collaborations because I’m taking the album somewhere else. It’s more on my imagination, I’m just wondering who can hang with the kind of stuff I’m talking about man.


Dubcnn: With the last album “Killer”, you sold your millionth album. That’s a big accomplishment, especially, for an independent artist. Did you kind of feel like you made it or accomplish something?

Tech N9ne: I feel like I accomplished something, but not that I made it. That just let the rest of the industry know that we were alive. Whether it be major, or independent artists everywhere else, it made them see us like, “Wow Tech N9ne did this at a time where it’s bad for the industry.” So I was blessed and I felt wonderful to be able to have reached that plateau, but that just lets me know that I got a lot more work to do because everybody’s watching us. We have to show and prove to make it grow, like a forest fire.


Dubcnn: How do you guys build such a strong following, such a loyal following, doing it all independent without the radio and MTV and all that stuff?

Tech N9ne: The way we do our thing, the way we prosper, the way we stay afloat, and the way we show this wonderful act of longevity is because we do extensive touring man. We go to these towns and we make it grow. We start at the bottom and then we grow because when they see our stuff they go out and tell ten more friends and it keeps growing. So our thing is touring, being a politician, going out shaking hands, and kissing babies. Passing out that beautiful virus, that beautiful music virus. The beautiful virus of music is what I’m trying to say; we don’t pass out no other kind of virus, haha. So it’s all about that with no radio and no video. We gotta get out there and tour and shake hands and get the people to know who you are and that’s how you do it.


Dubcnn: So what’s the status on Kabosh? (rock act)

Tech N9ne: Actually, we’ve been so busy, we haven’t been able to, because we have to assemble a band. Actually Krizz Kaliko was with the drummer I had in mind. RJ, his cousin, nephew? Nephew, and he’s hardcore, he wins contests all over the world man, being the hardest drummer. I ran into a steel drum player I went to school with, a violinist. I just ran into my cousin, Sizzlin’, and he plays the harmonica. I’m just tryin’ to really go, just looking for a hardcore bassist, and a hardcore lead guitar man. It’s just gonna take some time, and I’m hoping we’ll have the time soon, because Kabosh is something we’ve been planning a long time.


Dubcnn: Doing a rock album as a hip-hop artist is kind of a departure. Do you think you’ll alienate any of your fans?

Tech N9ne: Nah, I don’t think it’s a departure because we’ve always have a rock feel and a lot of music that I make has a rock feel. When you listen to “Beef” it has a rock feel, when you listen to “Tormented”, the first song on my first album has a rock feel, we do it, “Absolute Power” had that rock feel. We already have it, but we just gonna expand on it, we gonna elaborate on it, that’s all we’re gonna do with Kabosh.


Dubcnn: What do you think about Lil’ Wayne and his rock thing?

Tech N9ne: I haven’t heard anything. All I heard was “Prom Queen”. We’re in our world and it’s hard to see what everybody else is doing unless you just sit down and we never have time to sit down. I was sitting at the house and I saw “Prom Queen” and I was smiling, it’s a wonderful thing, I thought.


Dubcnn: Why don’t you ever do mixtapes? You usually do those albums with the guest appearances.

Tech: Those are my mixtapes, collabos, those are Tech N9ne mixtapes. I’d much rather do original music. We might do one real soon. There’s been talk of people wanting to hear me over other tracks, so it can be done, but I’d rather give people original music. The Tech N9ne collabo series, that’s my idea of a mixtape. You might have it soon, you might have it coming real soon. DJ Skee I think we’ve been talking to, my publicist wants me to do something with DJ Skee. Yeah, Skee TV, I think that’s what they want me to do. We’ll see, you might see a Tech N9ne mixtape real soon man, have me murderin’ tracks that are already out there.

Dubcnn: So you’ve sold a million records, you’re doing really well, headlining something like this, Paid Dues. Who are you trying to put on (other artists) now that you’ve reached some level of recognition?

Tech N9ne: Talk.

Krizz Kaliko: Us right here man. As we’ve said, earlier today, we’ve been alongside of him playing the role of hype man, even creative partners. I myself have been a real instrumental creative partner on a lot of the hooks for the past nine years. It was always the plan for us to branch out and do our own thing, even though Tech N9ne is an individual, the act of Tech N9ne is the three of us onstage that you see. We’ve always had plans to expand and always had our own individual style and talent, me and Kutt Calhoun. I dropped an album last year, it actually charted on Billboards really good, it’s called “Tech N9ne presents Krizz Kaliko: Vitiligo”. I got a new one coming July 14th called “Genius”. It’s a crazy beautiful work of art, so that’s what the future is right now. It’s us branching out, and we throw the line in to see what we can catch. Fortunately our popularity, because Tech’s more popular and we’re with him, our popularity has grown and enabled us to be able to do incredible record sales on our own, there it is, Kali baby.

Kutt Calhoun: Definitely, Kutt Calhoun, what’s up everybody. Like Kali was saying, we have helped, (myself, Tech N9ne, Kaliko) we have planted the cement for the foundation and we have built the building of the house around it, should you say whatever metaphor you’d like to use. We’ve started the foundation and we’ve completed the project. Now that the project is going strong, it’s time for myself Kutt Calhoun, big Krizz Kaliko to get out there and start our own foundations and build and complete our own projects as well as still keep this fabulous trio going on. That’s the whole basis of this, that’s the whole point. I don’t see us stopping anytime soon. All you gotta do is look on the Strange Music sampler man, it say’s, “We Are Your Future” and I look at me and Kaliko being the future of Strange music, along with Tech N9ne, whether he continues to rap or whether he wants to play the backgrounds and be the executive part of it, but I don’t think that’s gonna happen anytime soon. You gonna continue to see us man, we gonna be in your face, we gonna be in your ear, we gonna be through the radio waves, we gonna continue to do this.

Krizz: In your daughter.

Tech N9ne: And your daughter, not your daughter.

Kutt Calhoun: We are your future, Strange Music. Kutt Calhoun, Tecca Nina, big Krizz Kaliko.

Krizz: Kali baby.


Dubcnn: You guys are about to go on tour to promote the album. What do you do to prepare for going on tour?

Tech N9ne: What do we do to prepare? We actually rehearsed this time. We just purchased this $2.1 million dollar building, Sizzlin’, and we put up mirrors and everything and big sound and we’ve been practicing and rehearsing for the “Sickology 101” tour with Murs, Tech N9ne and my homeboy Short Dawg. It’s gonna go down man, and that’s pretty much what we do. The show’s gonna be like an hour and fifteen, an hour and ten minute workout. It’s a lot of energy man. Since November I’ve been working on “Sickology” I’ve gathered this little stomach. I’m gonna lose it on this tour because as much as we’re doing, we’re gonna kill ourselves out there like we normally do when we do a show, we bring that energy.

Kutt Calhoun: Aside from that, aside from the thing we love doing, the thing we dream, the sh-t that’s in our blood, in our bones, after we get off that stage, party and bullsh-t.

Tech N9ne: Yeah we lose some weight partying and bullsh-tting too.


Dubcnn: Yeah, speak on that, we know you like to party. What’s a typical night, after a show with Tech N9ne?

Tech N9ne: Depends on who’s there. If it’s fans that have kicked it with us before they wanna drink Caribou Lou. So I’ll have them bring a pitcher and I’ll mix up the Caribou Lou for em’ and we’ll drink, maybe they’ll get naked, you never know, if they’re females, you know what I’m sayin’? Because we never let no dudes on the bus, unless it’s press. Caribou Lou maybe, but if it’s just us with some people we know, we drinkin’ KC Tea: Hennessy, Sprite, and lemon. Listenin’ to some music, watching some pornos or something. Playboy TV stays on our bus like all the time.

Krizz Kaliko: Yeah, cause’ Kutt puts it on there, and wakes up in the morning, eats some scrambled eggs with Playboy TV on.

Kutt Calhoun: 595, and Playstation.


Dubcnn: Alright, that’s what’s up, well thanks for your time and good luck on the upcoming tour.

Tech N9ne: Yeah, this be the one them call Tech N9ne, right here on Dubcnn, act like ya knew it.