Tech N9ne stands as one of the most successful independent Rap acts of the last decade. In the early 1990s, though, the Kansas City rapper was signed to Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, among the biggest producers of the era, a duo that worked with several multi-platinum acts, including Janet Jackson.
Rather than launch his career, though, the co-owner of Strange Music says that that early deal was the lowest point in his career.
“It probably had to be after my deal with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis went south in ’93,” Tech N9ne says during an interview with XXL. “I spent the summer of ’93 in L.A. recording with people they were hooking me up with back in the day. I got a record deal with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis on Perspective Records in ’93. After that, it didn’t work, so we came back home. They cut off the money and stuff. They paid me monthly. That’s when Nnutthowze came about, because we didn’t have anything. I stayed with my producer Icy Rock and we just making crazy music. Fuck up our hair. We don’t care what they think about us.”
Post Perspective, Tech N9ne began working on a new batch of material, some of which would appear on his first nationally distributed album, 2001’s Anghellic. “Nnutthowze” became an integral part of Tech N9ne’s material at the time.
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“That is Tech N9ne,” he says. “What Brian Dennis built. Tech and Brian Dennis. These dark-minded guys came up with Nnutthowze. And we spelled it N-N-U-T-T-H-O-W-Z-E. We spelled nut with two Ns and two Ts because it stands for New Narcotical Unattainable Techniques. The house of new narcotical unattainable techniques. That’s the whole Tech N9ne spirit. That’s how Strange Music came about. The whole, ‘Fuck you, we are going this way attitude’ is Nnutthowze all day.”
