Home > Baltimore Music > CD Review > Tech N9ne, 'Killer'

Backstory: Rapper Tech N9ne (of Kansas City, Mo.) is almost a cult figure in the rap underground, a popular live performer who spends the majority of his time touring. Not for the faint of heart, he’s been known to match any hard rocker’s intensity on stage. “Killer” is his 11th release, a big double album that’s easily his most expansive.

Why you should care: His music eliminates the excuse of listening to rap songs with good beats and ignorant messages, because he never wastes a track by talking nonsense over it.

Verdict: An impressive and rewarding effort, Tech N9ne combines substantive lyrics with well-crafted instrumentation to back it up. A great example of this is “Black Boy” (featuring Brother J, Ice Cube and Krizz Kaliko)—featuring wise words from MC veterans about the dual edge of white consumption of black culture, it also boasts a tremendous sing-along chorus that you’d normally expect of a song far more superficial.

X-Factor: The clever cover of “Killer” finds Tech N9ne in a straightjacket, his pose and the album’s font suggestive of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Tech N9ne doesn’t have quite the same commercial appeal—Jackson has sold more than 27 million copies of “Thriller” in the United States—but he does expect “Killer” to bring his total album sales to at least one million, a proud achievement for such a grassroots artist.

Add a comment