BWW Reviews: Tech N9ne's New Album, 'Something Else'

Tech N9ne is finally starting to become popular. He's been an interesting figure in rap since he made his debut in 1999. However, it took him a long time to become popular because he marred his music with lots of horrorcore stylings, which made many listeners consider him demonic.

Tech would do what he fancied, including taking the stage with crazy face paint. This often alientated many of his fans. However, with his 2011 album All 6's and 7's, Tech decided to strip away the horror in favor of a personal, but nevertheless eerie tone. While Tech had previously featured popular artists in combination with the members of his label, Strange Music, he also started to focus on this with All 6's and 7's.

Well if his previous album showed Tech's ability to bend mainstream artists to his sound, 'Something Else', Tech's new album, flaunts it. With 'Something Else', Tech N9ne proves that he is exactly that. On one song he and Serj Tankian duet over ominous synths, on another he and Kendrick Lamar-who kills his verse-rap over a soft rock infused beat, there's even a song featuring the remaining members of The Doors.

This album, while sonically ambitious, also has a narrative that ups the ante of Tech N9ne's creepy, but not horrific, imagery. The narrative focus is a meteorite that crashes down in a Kansas City suburb, and begins to spread a burgundy mist in the surrounding area, this mist causes things to become chaotic at first, but later leads to a clear decrease in crime and an increase in test performance among all schoolchildren. Between these skits are three thematically different sections.

The first, "Fire," deals with Tech's demons and allows him to put the deepest and darkest facets of his persona on the line. Following the Fire section is Water, a section which, as its name suggests has lighter themes. The Water section is the party section, located between two extremely deep song sets. The best portion of the album though, in terms of exposition, is Earth. It is in the final portion of the album that the chaos that the meteorite caused turns into peace and prosperity.

He closes out Earth with a song called "Strange 2013," on this song Tech works with The Doors, and puts out a phenomenal recreation of their song "Strange Days." Having talked about the entire album, I want to focus briefly on the very opening lines of the album. Tech begins the song "Straight Out the Gate," with his infamous Technician chant, "Together we are/A powerful force/As one mind, body, and soul/Let no evil enter, nor attempt to reduce us, because of the beliefs we hold/And with this love, combined with our strength, we ward off pain and stress/ Technician I am, wholeheartedly, in life and in death." He begun both All 6's and 7's and Something Else with these very lines, and if Something Else doesn't make you a believer, well, I'm not entirely sure what will.

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