Logjam Presents:

Tech N9ne

Krizz Kaliko

Stevie Stone

Codependents

Farch

The Wilma

Missoula, MT
Add to Calendar 10/11/2017 20:00 10/11/2017 11:30 pm America/Boise Tech N9ne

Logjam Presents Tech N9ne, Krizz Kaliko, Stevie Stone, Codependents & Farch at The Wilma on October 11th, 2017! Tickets are on sale now at The Top Hat, online or by phone at (877) 987-6487. All tickets are general admission standing room only. All ages are welcome. Additional ticketing and venue information can be found here.   About Tech N9ne While crafting what… Continue Reading

Logjam Presents - Missoula, Montana false MM/DD/YYYY
7:00pm (door) 8:00pm (show)
$32 (Adv.) $35 (DOS) + applicable fees
All Ages
Tickets

Logjam Presents Tech N9ne, Krizz Kaliko, Stevie Stone, Codependents & Farch at The Wilma on October 11th, 2017!

Tickets are on sale now at The Top Hatonline or by phone at (877) 987-6487. All tickets are general admission standing room only. All ages are welcome.

Additional ticketing and venue information can be found here.

 

About Tech N9ne

While crafting what would be one of the most important albums of his career, Tech N9ne thought back to some of his early material. Before Strange Music became the No. 1 independent rap music label, the Kansas City rapper released The Calm Before The Storm. The acclaimed collection included songs that hinted at the type of artist he would become, from the conceptually rich “Questions” to the devilishly clever “Mitch Bade.”

So for The Storm, Tech N9ne wanted to revisit and build upon his musical foundation. “I knew if I named it The Storm, it would push me to do the best music I’ve ever done,” Tech N9ne explains. “I’m coming off of Special Effects, which featured songs with Eminem, Krizz Kaliko, 2 Chainz, B.o.B and T.I. But it’s not just the features. It was a big record, period. I just couldn’t come with a title that wasn’t going to push me. It actually pushed me to do some damn good music, man.”

The resulting The Storm features Tech N9ne delivering 20 stellar songs that fit into three sonic worlds. The Storm kicks off with the “Kingdom” section, a showcase for the rapper’s narcissistic side. He then travels to “Clown Town,” which finds him at his darkest. The set closes with the “G. Zone,” a nod to the gangster side of his personality.

Longtime Tech N9ne fans will recognize this type of layered artistry, something he introduced on 2001’s Anghellic, his first national release and the first album released on Strange Music. Anghellic features Tech N9ne navigating through “Hell,” “Purgatory” and “Heaven.” The conceptual master later explored his “The King,” “The Clown” and “The G” personas on his 2006 album, Everready (The Religion).

With The Storm, Tech N9ne reintroduces “The King,” “The Clown” and “The G” to his longtime listeners. He also introduces them to his new fans, people who may have become Technicians thanks to his more recent material, including the gold certified singles “Fragile” with Kendrick Lamar and ¡Mayday!, as well as “Hood Go Crazy” with 2 Chainz and B.o.B.

The Storm’s first single “Erbody But Me” fits perfectly in the “Kingdom” section of The Storm. On the kinetic cut, Tech N9ne deflects detractors and salutes his swag, while the percussive “Wifi (WeeFee)” trumpets Tech N9ne’s status as a plug as he delivers some intricate alliterative rhyming. Elsewhere, the raucous “Sriracha” features Logic and Joyner Lucas, both of whom asked Tech N9ne to appear on the cut after hearing an early version of the Michael “Seven” Summers-produced cut. Thanks in part to his guests on the song, “Sriracha” evolved into something different from how Tech N9ne first imagined it.

“It was not mean to turn into a chopper song, but Joyner Lucas, whenever he gets on anything, he has to kill everything,” Tech N9ne explains. “Almost nobody ever sends me tracks for real, so the people that send me ones are brave. Joyner Lucas sent me one because he’s a brave soul. That’s cool ‘cause I’m usually the one always sending tracks out. So what I did on ‘Sriracha’ is what the beat needed.”

Things get confrontational on the mesmerizing “Get Off Me,” a collaboration with Problem and Strange Music’s recently signed new artist, Darrein Safron. The three showcase their braggadocio side with high-powered lyricism, something that was of particular importance to Darrein. Tech N9ne says that because Safron in known as an R&B singer, people don’t think he can rap. “He’s a product of his environment,” Tech N9ne says. “He’s not trying to act like nobody. He’s like, ‘These people don’t think I can rap.’ So he rapped and he killed it. I love that. Problem did what he does and he killed it to. Everyone’s going to love this song when they hear it.”

Tech N9ne descends into “Clown Town” with “I Get It Now,” the darkest portion of the album, which details the rapper’s longstanding struggle with not fitting into the traditional rap world, while “Hold On Me” features him taking a sobering look at his relationships with women. Then there’s “Poisoning The Well,” which showcases a bluesy sound. As Tech N9ne emerges into the “G. Zone” section of the album, he laments that he’s not as successful and acclaimed as he should be on “The Needle” and he imagines getting away to find peace on “Anywhere” with Marsha Ambrosius.

Tech N9ne’s creative prowess shines throughout The Storm, as does the work of primary producer Michael “Seven” Summers. “We’re a great team,” Tech N9ne says. “We bounce ideas off each other all the time. Seven is just so diverse that he can do a song like the one I did with Jonathan Davis on here called ‘Starting To Turn,’ which is super metal, and then turn around and do ‘Get Off Me’ with Problem and Darrein Safron. He’s also able to do ‘No Gun Control’ with Gary Clark Jr. and Krizz Kaliko and then do ‘Buss Serves,’ the Too $hort remake of ‘CussWords.’ If I had a word for Seven, it would be ambidextrous.”

For his own work, Tech N9ne has a high standard. “I have to rap against Tech N9ne every time I do a record,” he says. “And that’s hard to do.” Tech N9ne has been doing just that since he emerged in the mid-1990s. Subsequently, the visionary rapper has become as one of the genre’s most prolific and acclaimed artists. He and business partner Travis O’Guin have built Strange Music into the industry standard with robust music, touring and merchandise components. Even though Strange Music remains fiercely independent, Tech N9ne still enjoys major label level success. He earned his second and third gold certifications in 2016 for his “Fragile” and “Hood Go Crazy” singles, testaments to O’Guin’s and his dedication to the company. “Reinvest, reinvest, reinvest,” Tech N9ne says. “That’s how you build. That’s how we built this empire.”

As Strange Music grew into a music industry force, it developed a reputation over the last decade-plus as one of the only reliable businesses in the field. All of that made the The Storm so striking to Tech N9ne’s fans and Tech N9ne himself, but the workload is not easy. “It’s hard, but I make sure that I have some happiness around me at all times” Tech says.

Revisiting his roots and overcoming adversity helped shape The Storm, Tech N9ne’s most powerful musical moment. Brace yourself.

Krizz Kaliko

Krizz Kaliko Image

There are two kinds of crazy in this world — crazy you stay away from and crazy that manifests itself as brilliance. Krizz Kaliko knows both ends of that extreme, whether by design or not.

Born Samuel William Christopher Watson, at age two — well before becoming musical co-conspirator to Midwest rap legend Tech N9ne — he developed vitiligo, a skin disorder that causes loss of pigmentation. His eyelids and lips are splotched white and he cuts an odd figure; in a crowd or alone, he’s impossible to miss.

“Growing up, kids would pick on me and kids would bully me,” he says. “They’d throw rocks at me and chase me home, because I looked different. It hurt. It changed me. Made me sad. But then, also, it made me do things to alleviate that sadness. I learned to sing. I learned to dance. I learned to rap. I was a fat little kid that didn’t look like anyone else — naturally, that became my biggest asset. Somehow, I became pretty popular.”

Kaliko was reared in the racially-diverse suburbs of South Kansas City, Missouri. His mother was a singer of local renowned gospel group; father, the superintendent of a Sunday school. He first stretched his vocal cords in the choir, and, had it been up to his parents (they divorced when he was just 4-years-old), he’d have gone on to a fine career as an attorney. After two years at Penn Valley Community College he quit school. Something else was tugging at his soul. Something from his youth.

“My stepfather used to whoop on me,” Krizz says, “He was fresh out of the pen, and he was a terrible dude.  He was physically abusive and crazy, institutionalized crazy. Not only was he crazy, but also a criminal. He made his bones robbing banks and committing other serious crimes. For Kaliko, step-pops is an enduring source of much psychological pain.

“He terrified me” he says. “When people weren’t around and my mother wasn’t there, he’d abuse me. And nobody believed what I said. It was like I was the crazy one. I thought about killing him all the time,  I’d think about it endlessly. Visualizing it, how I’d do it, I was that mad. I would get weapons from my friends — bats, knives, or whatever it would take. I thought: I will kill him in his sleep. And then miraculously the boogie man disappeared, he and my mother split up.”

Carrying his childhood scars, Kaliko spent his teens and early twenties drifting, not especially successful or unsuccessful at anything, he opted to not continue with college. He went on to hold a series of odd jobs. He was a grocery store clerk, corrections officer and even a customer service rep for VoiceStream (later to be known as T-Mobile) meanwhile, he quietly pursued music by rapping and singing, not hewing to any conventional standard for what it should sound like.

“I was just a fan,” he says. “And that allowed me to go in many different directions. I could identify with country songs, gospel songs, Christian rock songs, songs that were meant for dancing, commercial songs, non-commercial songs. I was and still am, a liberal thinker. I enjoyed everything, and through music I could do anything, be anything. Most importantly, I could be myself.”

One artist who appreciated Kaliko’s approach was rapper Tech N9ne. The pair met in 1999, through DJ Icy Roc, who once dated Kaliko’s sister. After paying Tech the whopping sum of $500 to feature on his solo album, the Strange Music co-founder discovered Kaliko’s diverse skill set. He asked him to appear on “Who You Came To See,” from his 2001 album, Anghellic, and then they began performing together locally. It lead to a years-long series of collaborations — Kaliko writing, producing, featuring on, touring with and generally being a musical wunderkind in the Strange Music family.

“It was like I was his musical muse, and he was mine,” says Kaliko. “We learned from each other. On stage, in the studio— nobody has believed in me, wanted more for me, wanted the entire world to hear and know and understand my talent, more than him.”

In 2007, Kaliko officially linked with Strange Music. Since then he’s released five albums, each one more confessional, more expressively oddball than the previous. Songs in his oeuvre include: “Bipolar,” “Misunderstood,” “Freaks,” “Rejections,” and “Scars,” as well as appearing on many others, endearing him to society’s misfits. In recent years, he’s also become more clear-headed about who he is and what he wants to do musically.

“For years I rapped and rapped well,” he says. “The fans enjoyed it, I enjoyed it. I made some good music, but it was time to try some new things.”

That much is clear from his new album, Go, where he ditches rapping almost completely. Instead he commands listeners to the dance floor, belts out melodies, softly croons, plaintively coos while generally seeming to enjoy himself more than he ever has before. Yes, nearly a decade into his career, Krizz Kaliko is rebranding, rebirthing — or as he’d say, returning to his roots — as a full-fledged singer. Pop, rock, R&B, trap, funk, no genre is off limits, no scale unsung.

“I just wanted to make timeless music, songs that could play twenty years from now,” he explains. “Go is a roller coaster ride. It starts out as dance, but then there are other parts where one might listen on a pair of headphones, because it’s very meaningful. Other songs you might turn up in your car. Through it all, I’m speaking from the heart.”

The album is chock full of earworms, songs both aesthetically-appeasing, yet also immediately captivating and catchy. Case in point: the brooding “Stop The World;” folky anti-depression ode, “Happy-ish;” or the shout-along “Didn’t Wanna Wake You.” Not completely abandoning hip-hop, songs like “More,” featuring labelmate Stevie Stone, and “Orangutan” — with Strange Music all-stars Tech N9ne, Rittz, Ces Cru, JL, and Wrekonize — invoke the crew’s knowing, trusty Midwestern flavor. Mostly though, Go is a new sound; all frenetic, inspired energy. It’s the biggest, broadest, most accessible project Krizz Kaliko has ever made.

“The truth is I’m an unlikely guy to be a pop star,” he says. “Look at me— I’m a big dude, I have vitiligo, I get anxiety attacks, and I’m bipolar. But Top 40 radio and a global audience, that’s what this music is worthy of. I’ve always been an unlikely dude to do anything, whether it’s music, working with Tech N9ne or even being alive. Frankly, the odds being against me, that’s good, I like that. I have trust that the music will ultimately reign supreme.”

Stevie Stone

Codependents

Farch