From Hell

As for life on the road, Tech describes his fans as the best thing that's happened to him since his children.

"My fans give a fuck enough about my life to go pay for a CD or buy a ticket so I can take care of my children," he says.

Born Aaron Dontez Yates, Tech grew up in a Blood neighborhood in Kansas City, Missouri. He eventually joined a gang called the 57th Street Road Dog Villains. (He gives a shout-out to a fallen member on Everready's lead-off track, "Riotmaker.")

These days, his life is distanced from that past —no drugs, no pimpin', no beef with anyone in the industry or on the street. Still, he says, being in a gang made him the person he is.

"My family really loved me, but when I got with my gang niggas, man, they taught me to be a man," he says. "This is the positive thing they taught me about the gang shit, man — togetherness. I love that those dudes stayed together through all those trials and tribulations. Through gang-banging, through drugs, through hatred from other people, they stayed together."

Most of his old running buddies are still alive and out of jail, too. Tech has never been arrested, and he made his first court appearance just this year, sorting out child-support payments to his local baby's mama. Maybe his gang survived because it wasn't the hardest on the block?

"People are going to hate to hear this," he answers, "but they [his former gang mates] are the hardest — they're men, dawg. A bullet don't give a fuck about how much of a man you are, but these guys are angels.

"How can that be — gang-bangers are angels?" he continues. "I kicked it with these people, I lived with these people, and I know they hearts. Never mind what they grew up around."

With that in mind, it's surprising that today's Tech N9ne is not a gangsta rapper. In fact, many of his fans are white — most noticeably, followers of his frequent tourmates the Insane Clown Posse, who paint their faces in clown makeup, like Tech, and call themselves juggalos. They're quite the misfits in the world of fandom.

"I'm everybody," he claims, "so my fans are growing rapidly. Juggalos are part of everybody. My fan base ain't ever been just juggalos."

Though his music isn't for everybody (East Coast aficionados may not dig it), it has broader appeal than the haters say.

There's nobody who sounds like Tech N9ne. His music spans from ominous rap-metal to sparse, heavy-drumbeat hyphy — the latter captured on the new single "Bout ta' Bubble," a party track that samples an Art of Noise song favored by B-boys back in the day. Present still on Everready is Tech's penchant for orchestral, Tim Burton-movie-soundtrack gothic backdrops and his trademark, percussive vocal chah, which his producers seem to be able to summon at the push of a button.

Tech doesn't brag through his songs, as some rappers do; he doesn't rhyme about bling or cars. He tells stories from his life, and he does it with a literate, self-effacing flair.

Case in point: "My Wife, My Bitch, My Girl," track 11 on Everready, which is preceded by a comical mock game-show skit that has the contestant (Tech) spinning a wheel in hopes of winning all three females. In the skit's ideal world, he wins them all, but in the reality that unfolds in the song, he has trouble with all of them.

"I hate that that's a true story," he says. "I hate that it had to be that. I wish it could've been just my wife."

Everready is full of similar stories, told with dexterity and cleverness. Tech can definitely rap. And though he still paints "Fuck Off" in decorative letters on his face at shows, the stories he tells nowadays are more profound than his past tales of sex, drugs and vampire strippers.

Hell, the guy's 35.