Kansas City, Missouri is few peoples’ idea of a hotbed of hip-hop. Yet for the fourth year in a row, that city’s Strange Music label has landed its co-founder and flagship artist, Aaron “Tech N9ne” Yates, on the Forbes Cash Kings list.
Tech’s success, and Strange’s as a whole, owes much to the vision of its other co-founder, CEO Travis O’Guin. O’Guin made a fortune in the furniture business while still a young man, and met Yates while looking for endorsees for a streetwear company he was financing. The two became fast friends, and it wasn’t long until O’Guin was helping Yates get his chaotic business affairs (at one point, he had over half a dozen people claiming to be his manager) in order.
The duo formed Strange Music in 1999 and over the ensuing years, have built it into a multi-million dollar business with tentacles in film and video production, satellite radio, merchandising, and, of course, music.
At the center of the business is Yates. His intense touring schedule – he averaged 200 shows a year for five years straight – and his rapid album output leave his legion of rabid fans (“Technicians,” in company parlance) satisfied.
But O’Guin is thinking long-term. His star artist will be turning 44 this fall, and both partners want to make sure the company continues to grow even if Yates should slow down his touring or recording. One primary way they do this is by having multiple acts on the road at once. At one point last year, the label had six separate tours operating simultaneously.
Yates’ years of intense touring, and the relationships with venue owners that have come out of that, helps makes life easier for the label’s younger acts. “We’ve had the luxury of shortcuts,” O’Guin points out. “In other words, we have the knowledge of what it took to get to this point with Tech. We take all that stuff and apply it to these developing acts.”
However, it seems unlikely that Yates will slow down his touring anytime soon. “His comfort zone is the road,” O’Guin explains. “When he’s home for too long, he begins to get edgy.” But if he does, a second career as an actor seems likely. Yates recently filmed a major role in the movie Alleluia! The Devil’s Carnival, to positive notices.
“He was very nervous because he’s such a perfectionist,” O’Guin tells me. “But now that he realizes he can act, he’s going to look at some of these other opportunities in front of him a little more seriously. He’s had multiple offers to act in different films, and simply hasn’t done it because his focus was music. But I see him gradually entering into film more and more.”
Yates is also, even now, the label’s main A&R person, discovering most of the label’s dozen other acts. If he spends less time on the road, O’Guin believes, he would delight in getting a chance to develop and work more closely with some of those acts.
Strange also spends a lot of resources making sure that Tech N9ne fans get exposed to those other acts. The label’s rappers frequently tour together, appear on each others’ albums, and even big-up each other on social media. Even ads and CD samplers for new albums always feature other upcoming Strange releases. There is even a compilation album series called Strangeulation that features all of the label’s artists, and is specifically designed to cross-promote.
“All the different artists on Strange Music appear on this album,” O’Guin says. “There’s a cipher, which every artist participates in. Then there’s multiple mash-ups and songs and collaborations. A lot of the Tech N9ne fans are going to buy it because there’s four or five of his solo songs on there. Then there’s also the collaborations. That’s one of the ways we introduced [veteran West Coast rapper and recent Strange Music signee] Murs when he signed to the label, is we put him on Strangeulation. A lot of people were like, man, who the fuck is that? They had no idea, and now they become Murs fans.
“The idea is not to have every single Strange Music fan buy every single Strange Music album,” he continues. “If they did that, that’d be awesome, but that’s not in my expectations. I’m not a delusional person. I respect the fans so much that I’m not going to try to force-feed them anything.”
Satori Ananda, Chief of Staff of the record label and management company W.A.R. Media (Pharoahe Monch, Mystic), has worked with Strange in the past, and feels like those fans don’t need to be force-fed. “While [Tech] has been the draw for so long,” she tells me via e-mail, “his participation in supporting the other acts on the label has created a brand trust like no other. In other words, when Strange says check this group out, their fans seem to listen. It’s a cosign beyond belief.”
In addition to its work with artists, Strange Music is expanding is through its partnership with Dash Radio. The Internet-based radio network was founded by DJ Skee. Strange created a station for them called “Independent Grind” that features only independent rap. O’Guin explained to me why his company got involved.
“We have the freedom to showcase other independent artists and the artists that are within our own label on this platform,” he says. “When this thing goes where it’s supposed to go, I’m going to be excited as hell. The reason it’s called ‘Dash’ is the idea of having it in your car. The goal is eventually to have wi-fi in all of these different cars. Skee is aligning himself with the right companies to have Dash be a part of every single car. When that happens, it’s a whole new game. We’re going to be there from the very ground level. Our station was one of the first stations to launch, and it’s also one of the most successful stations on Dash right now.”
That statement is backed up by Strange’s Senior Blog Editor Jeff Nelson, who is also in charge of programming. He confirms that Independent Grind is one of the platform’s top three most popular stations. While the station features a lot of Strange artists, Nelson tells me why they program all kinds of independent hip-hop, not just their own.
“Obviously, we put a lot of our stuff on there,” he points out. “But we’re picking what we think is the best and most remarkable independent hip-hop. It can be from somebody who’s incredibly well-known, like Jay Rock or Chance the Rapper. But we’ll put on people that you might not have heard about. We want to cause that reaction that’s like, who’s this? We’re really proud of those moments where people tweet us saying that they discovered a new artist because of our station.”
O’Guin brought to Strange Music a long-held Japanese-inspired business philosophy of keeping as much in-house as possible. To those ends, he recently built a multi-million dollar recording studio for the label’s acts after realizing he was spending “hundreds of thousands of dollars a year” in outside facilities.
“I invested over $4 million in Strangeland Studios,” he reveals. “There’s the building itself, and then the studios that we built upstairs. I went all out. I bought every single thing on our producers’ and our engineers’ list that they possibly wanted. We went in and built a beautiful studio, one that is sonically as accurate as anything I’ve ever heard. I’m very happy with it.”
The label also has an in-house eight person social media team, run by Digital Media Manager Victor Sandoval. Sandoval tells me that Strange’s artists all run their ownTwitter TWTR -3.85% accounts, and are so involved in their social media presences that, he laughs, “it is not uncommon for us to get e-mails [from them] with constructive criticism as to how we could be improving.”
The team handles Twitter, Facebook FB -3.26%, Instagram, and up-and-coming platforms as well. Sandoval has found that Periscope’s streaming video is perfect for Strange artists who want to give their fans a little something extra.
“It gives fans such an inside look into what the artists are doing on their way to a show, during the show, and after the show,” he explains. “The artists love to use it. Someone like Krizz Kaliko [Strange Music artist and longtime Tech N9ne onstage foil], who is a just a natural-born comedian and loves entertaining fans, he has a great time with it.”
Ananda vouches for Strange’s social acumen as well. “I was following Strange Music as a fan of the brand before I ever interacted with them professionally,” she says. “Their posts are clever, timely, and wildly interactive.”
In addition to all the social platforms, Sandoval’s team stays busy with the label’s extremely popular YouTube account. “It’s just so involved that we need multiple people just to help with the YouTube side of things,” he tells me. “We have over 370 million views on there. We have 856,000 subscribers. That’s a lot to handle.”
Ever conscious of keeping things in-house wherever possible, Strange has built an entire video production department in their Kansas City offices. They’ve also signed a deal with Full Screen to help monetize their YouTube views, something that O’Guin says is quickly turning into “real money” – money that he immediately invests back in the department.
“Now we own our own REDs [digital cameras], we own our own light trucks, we own our own grip trucks,” he says. “We have an entire building that’s for creative, and the whole lower level is dedicated to nothing but video production. You have the head of the department, Kerry [Rounds]. You have his assistants. We have cinematographers. We have lighting guys. We have set designers, grip people. It’s all in-house now. We’re able to produce much more than what we would be able to if we had to rely on somebody charging us an exorbitant amount to do these videos. So now we have a full-fledged video department that produces not only full-on videos, but also do all the marketing stuff that the social media needs, and they feed off of each other.”
As if that wasn’t enough, Strange is even moving into manufacturing. Currently under construction is a 26,000 square foot facility for making merch branded with the company’s snake-and-bat logo, to be called Strangeworld Merchandising. Much like with their recording studio, the merch company’s largest buyer is going to be a very familiar one.
“The biggest customer of Strangeworld Merchandising will be Strange Music,” O’Guin explains. “However, it will have the capacity of about 4.4 million pieces annually just as its start up. That’ll allow us to do a lot of work for a lot of other folks that want us to help them with merchandising. We’re setting ourselves up to do a pretty good volume in screenprinting, embroidery, and decorating.”
With his company set to prosper for a long time to come, you’d think that O’Guin could rest easy after over a decade and a half of hard work. But he doesn’t see it that way.
“I have this bottle of Louis XIII and a bottle of Hennessy Richard sitting on this little piece of furniture in my office,” he tells me. “People have wondered for years, ‘Dude, when are you going to crack these open?’ I don’t have an answer. I don’t know when we’re supposed to celebrate, because still today, we only feel like we’re about 45% of the way there. So are we supposed to celebrate being less than halfway done?
“I can’t subscribe to that way of thinking. I haven’t seen any one thing that’s this grand milestone. I think they’re all very important pieces of a much larger puzzle. Everything that we’re accomplishing is just one more step towards getting to the top. Some of them are more important than others. The fact that we just got Corey Taylor of Slipknot on our album? That might have been a couple of steps. The fact that we just got Eminem on this last Tech album and found out what a fan Em was of Tech, that might have been two or three steps. But we’re nowhere close. We’re 45% of the way there. So if this is 45%, I can’t wait to see what 90% looks like.”
O’Guin’s vision and attitude stands out to his employees, but it is his work ethic more than anything that cements his position as a mentor and leader.
“I’ve been on road trips with him where he drives the whole way there himself, not allowing anyone else to drive, gets out of the vehicle, and unloads the merchandise himself,” Sandoval says. “He is the epitome of work ethic. When the guy who’s supposed to be the CEO is doing things like that, there’s absolutely no excuse why anyone who is a component here at Strange Music can’t do the same or more.”
It is ultimately Nelson who best sums up why Strange is set for the long term, no matter which way its flagship act decides to go.
“This company has placed a very enormous importance and emphasis on their connection with the fans,” he says. “The fans don’t want to leave. They’ve put a lot of their heart into the snake and bat. So when you keep people coming back like that, that’s going to help you sustain long-term success.”
