Tech N9ne's Kansas City Relevance Addressed By Kutt Calhoun

Former member of Strange Music Kutt Calhoun was featured in DX Daily and explained how Tech N9ne represents his hometown of Kansas City. He says initially, the Strange Music leader was the flag-bearer for all things KC, but then the city had a hard time identifying with him.

“I think what kind of start of making it dissolve away, you know when Tech was just being Tech and wanted to do the face paint and wanted to do the red hair and the spikes and stuff,” Calhoun says in an exclusive interview with HipHipDX’s editor-in-chief Justin Hunte. “To where a lot of Kansas city, ’cause Kansas City is generally all street all urban type of Rap and even though people mess with Tech like that, just the same as in the industry, it’s hard to kind of back something that has a imagery of something that’s different.”

The independent rapper continues by saying the city supports Tech N9ne and understands his impact, but is still looking for a more complete representation of the culture.

“KC’s behind Tech, but at the same time, they wanna see more of a distinctive, permanent imagery to represent Kansas City because I live there, man,” says Kutt Calhoun, whose Kutting Loose EP is slated for a July release. “I listened to the streets. I hear everybody. They’re behind him. At the same time, they’re behind him from a distance to where it’s like, you ain’t gonna know just off the top, but if they tell anybody else from out of town, they gonna mention Tech because you ain’t got no choice to because he has done and the label, Strange Music, that I was on, has done more than anybody from Kansas City could do. But at the same time, man, that’s just how it is. The imagery thing plays a major role in it. Tech’s gonna be big whether KC’s 100 percent on the bandwagon or not. He’s still gonna do his thing.”