You can listen to JAMN-94.5 and watch MTV for a week straight and you won’t hear a single rhyme from Tech N9ne. But that doesn’t mean the Kansas City, Mo., rap king isn’t the most dominant force in independent hip-hop.
Heading into the East Coast leg of his 67-city Fire and Ice tour with Paul Wall, Ill Bill and Boston rapper Slaine, N9ne boasts that he’s sold out all but three shows so far. Not surprisingly, he expects packed houses for his New England gigs at the Worcester Palladium Thursday and Lupo’s in Providence on Friday.
“Whether its 4,000 fans in Denver or 700 fans in Dallas, it’s about getting people to know you,” N9ne said from a Pittsburgh tour stop. “That’s the key strategy for why we’re on the incline while everybody else is on the decline.”
While hip-hop album sales slipped 20 percent in 2007, N9ne sold more than 300,000 units of his CD “Tech N9ne Collabos: Misery Loves Kompany.” Cumulatively, he’s moved close to 1 million records as a solo artist.
“I’m on tour watching this dude do what I did in Boston on a national level,” Southie-based Slaine said. “My throat is killing me right now, but I’m learning so I can apply his strategy to my game.”
N9ne doesn’t simply operate beyond the mainstream. He also moves outside the hip-hop scene, which he said is quick to pre-judge his dark style and Alice Cooper-meets-Public Enemy stage show.
“They never understood me,” he said. “I’m a black dude with my face painted in a preacher’s robe rapping backwards. My own people, black people, won’t even come to my shows because they think I’m on some devil (expletive), even though everybody they adore adores me. Scarface, Ice Cube, Paul Wall and X-Clan are all on my new album, but I’m still the weirdo.”
But haters don’t faze N9ne. When he wants to infiltrate new demographics, he tours relentlessly until heads catch on.
“If you want to be the hip-hop president, you have to go from city to city and state to state,” he said. “Obama isn’t going to win by sitting around the house. I’m trying to get the East and the South now, that’s all I’ve got left.”
By teaming with Brooklyn MC Ill Bill of Non-Phixion, Slaine and Houston rapper Wall, N9ne has shown his business savvy is as calculated as his notoriously epic live spectacles.
“What sets this tour apart is that everyone is coming with a different recipe,” Ill Bill said. “It’s a combination of three crowds and three sounds.”
N9ne will need all the exposure he can get to fulfill his latest ambition: to sell more than 1 million copies of his new release, “Killer,” which drops July 1. The cover resembles Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” but shows N9ne wearing a straitjacket instead of a white leisure suit.
“I chose that Michael Jackson cover because that’s the highest - 50 million sold,” N9nee said. “It’s all about being the Michael Jackson of rap. Until that happens, hell yeah, I got a chip on my shoulder. I think the whole world needs to know my story.”
Tech N9ne, with Ill Bill, Paul Wall and Slaine, at the Worcester Palladium, Thursday. Tickets: $26.50; 800-477-6849. Also at Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel, Providence, Friday . Tickets: $25; 401-331-LUPO.
