Strange Music's built an empire over the years. Tech N9ne alongside his partner Travis O'Guin essentially helped build the template for independent rappers on the grind. Since 1999, they've approached the industry on their own accord, both musically and business wise. However, they definitely faced their fair share of adversities while trying to make it. We recently spoke to Travis O'Guin for our latest episode of The Plug where he spoke on Tech N9ne's come up, their struggles and more.
Despite being regarded as one of the best emcees to step to a mic, Travis O'Guin says Tech N9ne's unique look and dark themes wasn't initially embraced by the hip hop community and because of that, they faced a lot of challenges on the come up. He explains that in their beginnings, Tech was automatically labeled a devil worshipper, but that wasn't the case at all. Instead, he was a rapper that just wanted to explain himself.
"Here's a black dude with red spiked hair and imagery on Angelic, everybody thought that he was a devil worshipper and if you know this, the black community does not toy with religion." He explained, "I mean, I know why they labelled him a devil worshipper, but he was just really trying to explain his battle between good and evil and being stuck in the middle in purgatory... When you try to market something that's outside of the box, you have to take a whole new fresh approach and that's what we did."
Instead of having a machine behind them, O'Guin explains that they took a grassroots approach and eventually, managed to build their empire properly.
During our interview, he also talks about Top Dawg Entertainment and working with Jay Rock as well as following Birdman, Master P and other successful record label's templates to build Strange Music.
Peep the video above and subscribe to HNHH TV for more exclusive content.
