Going Back to Cali

The line snakes around the corner, down a long alley and into the parking lot behind the Blue Note in Columbia. Fans huddle three and four deep, shivering in the frigid night air as the clogged artery of humanity slowly filters through the security detail at the front door.

Tech N9ne has filled the grand, peeling Blue Note to near-capacity for the second time in as many nights. This crowd is a census taker's dream: white, black, young, old, rich, poor, male, female. The would-be thugs with drooping jeans, jerseys and cockeyed hats. The flannel country boys speculating about 'coon huntin' in thick Missouri drawls. Uncomfortable parents wearing Dockers and being towed behind their wide-eyed, FUBU-wearing progeny. The Abercrombie kids and the concert hoochies in tight "Tech N9ne" boob tops and Daisy Dukes.

The man sparks a fierce yet playful loyalty among his legions. A Tech show is an event, an exhilarating example of a hometown performer who is talented and unabashedly proud of his roots in a region infected with the Midwestern inferiority complex.

Tech has chosen not to advertise his upcoming move to California, which will grudgingly but effectively put that hometown pride in the rearview mirror. The fans packed into the Blue Note don't seem to know or care that a big office on the fifteenth floor of the Sunset Towers building in the heart of Hollywood awaits the object of their affection. Instead, they titter with the anticipation.

Just before midnight, a gunshot rings out. Then another. Then silence.

Rumbling bass rattles the darkness as Tech howls his mating call, "Tech Niiiiinnne!" The room explodes. The audience cheers and writhes and pumps its fists in the air before a single verse is uttered. Then a red blur of electricity and porcupine hair comes into focus. His eyes are wild. His tongue flicks like a snake. He snarls with glee. The word "Dark" is etched in white paint on his forehead.

"What's up, Columbia!"

Several half-naked women in cages engage in heavy petting behind Tech as he, Big Krizz Kaliko and Grant Rice launch into "Industry Is Punks," a song that makes up in ferocity what it lacks in grammar. It's a caustic ode to the music business, the anthem for Tech's fierce fuck-the-industry independence.

He rules the stage and reigns over the crowd, shouting "I love you!" whenever he isn't popping off rhymes at an auctioneer's clip. The atmosphere is atypically raucous for a hip-hop show, with Rice leaping off a stack of speakers into the audience and Tech doing a stage dive of his own. Despite the frequent phantom gunplay, the only ominous tone is set by the five large bodyguards positioned around the stage, scanning the crowd with leery eyes.

The congregation is sweaty and delirious by the time Tech launches into his testimonial "I'm a Playa." It's a madhouse. Heads are bobbing from in front of the stage to the last seat in the rafters. The entire roster of performers on Tech's label, Strange Music, crowds onto the stage for the finale, chanting the chorus while plastic bottles and water and who knows what else fly through the air. Tech shouts, "I love you! I'm out!" and disappears into the onstage delirium.

Things have never been better. But no matter what Tech N9ne says, time is getting short. The window of opportunity closes more each year. He's a star here, but he yearns to be a superstar everywhere. Tech has a gun.

Most readers will probably file that little detail under "No Shit." The man is named after an illegal semiautomatic weapon. But few would suspect the rapper with the red Medusa hair and a penchant for color coordination hates being strapped.

"It's horrible," he says. "I never wanted a big Clint Eastwood in my house to protect my babies. I've never had to carry a gun. I hope I never have to use it."

But packing heat is a peculiar caveat to hip-hop success. It's an altogether too-familiar formula. Learn to rhyme. Put in your time. Sign a contract. Make a record. Become popular. Buy a Glock. Have three tons of bodyguard escort you to the grocery store.

"You know you're doing something right when there's people who want to kill you because you're getting too big," Tech says. "And there are evil people out there who used to be my friends that want to kill me."

One of the city's most recognizable and loved musicians says he's been getting death threats and was recently assaulted in a movie theater. Tech and an entourage were watching a screening of Tupac: Resurrection when, he says, a former business partner punched him in the back of the head. (Tech's bodyguards quickly subdued his attacker.)

These are signs that both Tech's future and his past are catching up with him. Subtlety isn't one of his strong suits. If you cross him, you can expect a vitriolic reply on wax. He throws out diss tracks to antagonize the same people he suspects want him pushing up daisies. He's either brilliantly calling their bluffs or brazenly painting his own bull's-eye.