Away from the tour itinerary, other cities are circled: places Tech has never been, but where the Strange Music mail-order team have noticed clusters of shirt-buying fans or where he's already established, but hasn't played for a while. In chinagraph pencil markings, the rapper's last US tour is plotted in military detail, taking in remote cities in Montana, Idaho, Nebraska – the kinds of places most artists never visit. Even if it's two people in the audience when we go over there, fuck it."ĭownstairs, in the Kansas City offices of Tech's Strange Music label, there's a wipe-clean map of the United States tacked to the wall. We haven't done a seven in a long time, but I could still do a seven. It's wonderful to see it grow like that – and that's what we're gonna have to do in Europe.
The next time, it was 500 – now we sell out the House of Blues there. We performed like it was 7,000 people, so when we came back, word of mouth meant we played to 100 people. "The first show we did in San Diego, seven people came. "My quest has always been to get my story to the rest o' the people," the 37-year-old Aaron Yates explains, gently stroking his beard. Yet you've almost certainly never heard of Tech N9ne – and that, you sense, is quite exciting to him. He has shifted more than a million albums and co-owns a record label that may well be the most successful music business of its day. H e's the biggest-selling independent rapper in the US, and in 2008, Kanye West and Jay-Z were the only hip-hop artists to make more money from touring.