Inside Tech N9ne’s secret KC compound, where hip-hop, Lamborghinis & diamonds loom large
Your Guide to KC: Star culture and identity writer J.M. Banks is acting as a tour guide of sorts to some well-known and hidden gems, with a focus on Kansas City’s communities of color. Send your ideas to [email protected].
When rapper Tech N9ne teamed up with partner and Strange Music co-founder Travis O’Guin, he never imagined the duo would build one of the most extensive music compounds in independent music.
Outside of Kansas City, about 20 miles to the southeast and hidden within a quiet corner of an unassuming Lee’s Summit business area, sits the Strange Music Compound.
Nestled amid the mundane and nondescript industrial buildings, factories and warehouses resides a wonder within the local music scene.
Many have heard that it exists. Some have probably even caught a glimpse of a single building emblazoned with the music label’s serpent and bat logo and assumed they have seen it all. They are wrong.
The compound that’s remained a Kansas City secret isn’t one building. There are six — each an essential cog in the operation of Strange Music’s hip-hop music-producing machine.
For the first time for any news organization, label co-founder and CEO Travis O’Guin gave The Star full access for an exclusive look inside the multi-facility compound that he and business partner Tech N9ne (whose real name is Aaron Yates) created about 25 years ago.
“Man, from Snoop Dogg, Lil Wayne, Kendrick Lamar, SZA and Lady Gaga, all of them said this is amazing,” Tech said about the Strange Music compound. “Most only see HQ and the studio. They ain’t even seen Strange Land or Strange World and Strange Works. So, they just mind blown by HQ and Strange Land studios and the soundstage.”
Tech and O’Guin, a Van Horn High School graduate, united over two decades ago in a chance meeting and later built their music operation around the idea of assuring that artists get the space and whatever else they need to create freely.
O’Guin took a break from his usual day of business meetings and phone calls to lead a Star reporter and photographer on a guided look around the location where producers were hard at work creating beats, engineers were mastering tracks on state-of-the-art equipment and a Strange Music artist was filming a music video.
The complex spans an entire block owned by O’Guin. To Tech’s fans, the Strange Music compound is their Paisley Park, Graceland or Neverland Ranch.
The compound stands as a testament to the vision the two innovators had — to do something unique and cutting edge while allowing artists to have full control of their work — when they founded the Strange Music label.
Strange Music HQ
Everything at the compound starts at Strange Music HQ, the headquarters or business center of the operation.
But this is no average-looking business office. Beyond the usual reception desk, waiting area and conference room, visitors are greeted by rows upon rows of gold and platinum records — accumulated by Tech and the other 11 Strange Music artists — lining the gold-painted walls. The floors are covered in marble tiles and the ceiling is a gilded copper plating.
The walls in O’Guin’s office, on the first floor of the two-story HQ building, are also covered with records and plaques. Two Emmy awards, won for work with a local news network and one with the Chiefs for sports marketing, are displayed prominently in a bookshelf.
From this business center, Strange Music staff run the label’s online merchandise sales, IT department, and graphic design and social media operations.
Continuing through the building’s first floor, beyond the greeting area, O’Guin has created a two-story tall, hallway-long wall showcasing over 120 Strange Music album covers, each one blown up and framed. The wall tells the story of the decades-long journey that started in late 1999 with the making of Tech’s album “Anghellic,” released in 2001, and spans to his most recent release, this year’s “Tech N9ne Collabos: Class of Strange Music.”
The building also features the label’s trademark wall where they have hung dozens of trademark certificates for what seems like every variation of the word “strange” they have ever used — Strange Fest, Strange Days, Strange World, and so on. O’Guin has gone as far as trademarking the name of his daughter, Mackenzie, who is a pop artist. That certificate is hanging on the wall, too.
Next to the trademarks are two resolutions awarded to Tech: one from the city and the other from the state.
A walk-in closet is home to the Strange Music archives, with stacks of CDs and cassette tapes of every release including “Absolute Power,” “Everready (The Religion)“ and Tech’s first collaboration album “Misery Loves Company.”
Canvas prints of photographs that show Tech N9ne performances from all over the world hang on the walls leading up a staircase that zigs and zags to the second floor. In a conference room on that floor, a wall-length window provides a view into the building’s warehouse below. It’s the last step for merchandise that’s been boxed and is ready to head out to the fans who placed the orders.
Strange medicine
Just down the street — a short walk — from the HQ building is a parking lot filled with trucks and trailers used to haul all the equipment needed when Tech and other Strange Music performers travel the country on tour.
Across the parking lot is Strange World, which is the building on the compound housing the label’s merchandise. It’s also where products are designed and manufactured.
This building has more of a factory aesthetic. The slight smell of chemicals from the T-shirt printing production linger in the air.
Using a state-of-the-art screen-printing machine, located toward the back of the warehouse, up to 3,000 shirts a day are printed for the artists on the label. It’s constantly running. When The Star passed through, printers were hard at work creating a new T-shirt design for artist Skx Daddy.
Up front, teams of workers pull everything from T-shirts, hats, cups, key chains and posters from hundreds of crates and dozens of lockers to complete the many online orders that come in daily, or for crews to take on tour for all the Strange Music fans who show up all across the country.
“Our fanbase is very devoted, about 10,000 people have tattooed the Strange Music logo on them,” said O’Guin. “Touring and merchandising have still to this day been within 4% of each other and it is a multimillion-dollar revenue stream annually.”
For O’Guin, merchandising has become an integral part of the operation. He said a large chunk of the label’s profits come from online sales.
Strange World could easily be mistaken for a clothing store with so many racks of T-shirts and other clothing items of all colors filling much of the area.
In addition to the warehouse portion there is also an area they call Strange Works, a construction facility for large equipment and storage.
Strange Music fans have shown love for anything emblazoned with the easily recognizable serpent and bat logo. Unknown to a lot of fans, the logo is a lot more than a snake with bat wings representing the Strange Music initials. And to clear up a frequently made mistake: it is definitely not a dragon.
“If you know anything about Greek mythology, you would know about the Rod of Asclepius (also known as the Staff of Asclepius) and that’s the snake around the rod,” Tech said. “You will usually see it in the medical field. The bat is a nocturnal creature. So, we are the medicine to navigate through the darkness, that’s Strange Music. A lot of people don’t know that.”
A meeting
Before meeting a young Tech N9ne, O’Guin had no experience in the music industry. He owned a successful furniture business and met Tech while the KC rapper was struggling to find the freedom to step outside the box and do music his own way.
A music-making idea that at the time he had only contemplated became Strange Music, “a one stop-shop so they (artists) don’t have to go anywhere else for distribution. They don’t have to go anywhere for merchandise. They don’t have to go anywhere else for routing tours, marketing, social media and all that stuff,” said Tech. “It’s a wonderful thing because I’ve had major deals back in the day from Warner Brothers and Interscope (Records), and having so many opinions in the room can really slow the process. Having everything in-house means everybody is on one accord.”
O’Guin, a lifelong fan of hip-hop, listened to some of Tech’s music and after hearing the talent and passion behind the tracks, approached Tech and asked what he needed.
The rest, as they say, is history. The two started Strange Music originally in the basement of O’Guin’s house in Blue Springs and later moved to a building in a strip mall. As the label grew, with the two adding more staff and artists, the need for more room became clear.
“It was evident that we were going to need a lot more space,” said O’Guin. “It wouldn’t be until 2009 that we found an abandoned building in Lee’s Summit where the HQ currently resides, and we have built on additions since then.”
O’Guin bought up surrounding real estate and with Tech, made plans to turn the Lee’s Summit site into a music complex to match the likes of major labels in Los Angeles.
He thinks coming into the music industry as an outsider contributed to him being able to build the sprawling compound dedicated to making real the one-stop-shop vision that Tech had years ago.
Tech has built a following of people of all ages, races, nationalities and from various walks of life (known as Technicians).
Security and safety are paramount. Hundreds of cameras watch over each building in the compound from a security hub in the HQ. It takes a security fob to enter a building and, once inside, certain rooms and areas are only accessible to specific personnel.
O’Guin says people are always scouring the area in search of the Strange Music statue that stands outside the compound. Most of the time people just want to take a photo in front of it. But O’Guin’s daughter, Mackenzie Nicole, who is signed to the label, has experienced a few scary situations with obsessed stalkers near the compound.
Luxury in cars and diamonds
In addition to the hundreds of millions of dollars in production and touring equipment, there’s the luxury car garage known as Strange Box. It’s O’Guin’s favorite spot in the compound.
The day The Star visited, Strange Box housed 11 of O’Guin’s 20 high-end, high performance cars — two Lamborghini Urus vehicles, two Maseratis, a Ferrari, a Rolls-Royce Cullinan, an electric Hummer and a Corvette, all with designer rims, candy-coated paint jobs and leather interiors. Motorcycles, ATVs and bicycles were also parked there.
In case you’re wondering, all the cars belong to O’Guin. Tech doesn’t drive.
With all the vehicles coming and going, it makes sense for the compound to have its very own car wash on site, plastered with Strange Music logos. Vehicles belonging to the organization and staff are all serviced there.
The next building that makes up the compound is the creative core of the organization known as Strange Land. You can’t enter this two-story building without noticing the fully functional chopper-style motorcycle suspended above the reception desk. The bike, black with a dark orange flame design in the front, appears to hover midair 20 feet from the ground, but it is anchored to the second-floor terrace.
It’s impossible to miss that adjacent to the motorcycle hangs a large painting of Tech N9ne with black angel wings and hands of fans rising up to him. World-renowned artist Rob Prior created the piece.
Prior is known for his celebrity portraits. A second Prior painting depicting multiple versions of Tech performing hangs outside the studio area. Prior painted that one blindfolded on stage during a Tech performance. The paintings are special to Tech and O’Guin not just because Prior’s work has sold for millions of dollars, but because they symbolize the creativity that Strange Music inspires in those who are moved by the music.
On the lower level of Strange Land is a full kitchen, eating area, editing rooms for video production and more offices, including one belonging to Tech. But because of his busy touring schedule — about 250 shows a year — he doesn’t spend a lot of time behind his dark-wood desk. It sits below a copper ceiling. Gold and platinum plaques, along with an assortment of artwork, adorn the office walls. Tech keeps a few gifts given to him over the years there.
But the rapper has an entire room that houses the many paintings, custom masks, carvings and even puppets that he has received over the years from fans.
Upstairs at Strange Land, it’s all about music recording and production. The two studios — A and B — were built with no expense spared. Everything from the microphone, speakers and sound absorption material are top of the line, industry standards totaling in the millions. The mixing boards in each studio are about the size of a large dining room table and have hundreds of channels.
Each recording studio has a $40,000, diamond-encrusted Strange Music medallion sealed between the soundproof glass that separates the artist in the recording booth from the engineer.
The vault
Along another corridor is the Strange Music vault. This room — which The Star was asked not to photograph — is filled with several safes.
Locked away is expensive recording and video production equipment, plus decades of videocassettes that chronicle every show and major event throughout the history of Strange Music. The vault is also where O’Guin secures his most precious items, such as karate gi’s once owned by Bruce Lee, valuable comic books including a copy of Action Comics #1 (the first appearance of Superman), a Negro League Baseball jersey signed by dozens of legendary players, and the personal journals of Thomas Edison.
Also in the building is a warehouse for all of the touring equipment, including trailers, trucks, stage equipment and props, needed for the dramatic and spectacular live shows Tech has become known for.
A warehouse door that looks like it leads outdoors opens into what O’Guin said is the largest soundstage in the Midwest. The location has been used for hundreds of Strange Music videos.
Strange Music recording artist Aaron Shier, who performs under the name HU$H, has been signed to the label since 2021 and said he feels at home on the roster. The singer, producer and engineer was in town to record some tracks and a music video for his song “God Bless,” dedicated to his late father.
The Fairfax, Iowa, native has been recording music for over a decade and said he has never seen anything like the Strange Music Compound. Shier has recorded a collaborative album with Tech entitled BLIGHT and eight music videos at the Strange Music soundstage.
“It is absolutely amazing,” said Shier. “I have lived and worked in LA and I still have never seen a label with this kind of setup where everything is done in-house and as an artist, I have all this available.”
Shier said he went through his career feeling like an outsider, but at Strange Music he found a place where he fits in.
“Since I have been here nobody has ever told me what to do or anything I had to do,” said Shier. “Its really about giving the artist the freedom to create without having to worry about the minor details. I am grateful to be encouraged to be myself while experimenting without being hindered.”
For his video, the in-house production crew scrambled around the set checking equipment and getting the site ready for the artist. Hanging LED light bars that changed color lined the soundstage, and shattered glass was carefully placed along the floor in front of a white backdrop. That was just one scene in Shier’s video. The whole production usually takes a day.
Strange Music owns all of its video production equipment. And much like the recording studio, everything — from the cameras to the lights — is the best money could buy.
Soon the team plans on constructing a new 78,000 square feet HQ building on land next to the compound. As for any other new features in the future, the partners say nothing is off the table for the veteran record label.
“Me and Travis have had talks about turning the existing HQ into a distillery for our drink Caribou Lou, our beer Bou Lou and KC Tea,” said Tech. “We got so many ideas and it’s all a process. You gotta trust the process as they say.”
