Tech N9ne is thought for one of the placing visible identities in Hip-Hop, however in response to the Kansas City legend, each masks, clown face, and pair of hospital scrubs traces again to at least one particular person: his late mom, Maude “Marty” Sue Yates Khalifa. On this vacation, we reminisce on our dialog with the legend and his love for his mom.

In an interview with AllHipHop, Tech revealed that the darkish, theatrical imagery that has adopted him all through his decades-long profession wasn’t impressed by comics or horror. Nope, it was born from the hospitals, psychiatric wards and haunted homes he navigated as a toddler whereas watching his mom battle lifelong sickness.

“People called me a devil worshipper, but all that imagery came from my Christian mama.”

“My mom had grand mal seizures since she was 18,” Tech informed Chuck Jigsaw Creekmur. “Throughout my whole childhood, she’d have seizures in our Christian household, and we’d keep her in bed and make sure she didn’t swallow her tongue.”

Everything modified when she remarried when Tech was 12.

Her new husband, a Muslim man, believed she wanted psychiatric care after every seizure, which led to her being positioned in a number of psychiatric services throughout Missouri. Those visits left an imprint on younger Tech, particularly seeing her wearing outsized hospital scrubs throughout every keep.

“Every time I’d go visit her, she’d have on hospital scrubs,” he mentioned. “That’s one level of it – the Michael Myers, the killer clown, the dark imagery. All of that came from real life.”

The different half of his distinctive aesthetic was formed by his mom’s uncommon parenting type.

A religious Christian, she nonetheless launched her son to horror films and Halloween tradition at an early age. She took him to see Carrie in 1976 and the unique Halloween premiere in 1978. She introduced him by means of Kansas City haunted homes each October and to circus reveals the place he developed his childhood concern of clowns, a concern he later remodeled into his well-known “Killer Clown” persona.

But essentially the most highly effective lesson got here from her insistence that darkish imagery held no non secular hazard.

“She bought me a Dracula action figure,” Tech mentioned. “And she told me, ‘Don’t look at this Dracula any different than your G.I. Joe or your Darth Vader toy. They’re all plastic. They only have the energy you give them.’ That’s something a lot of religious folks don’t teach their kids.”

Tech says that steerage not solely formed his worldview however protected him creatively.

“So when people called me a devil worshipper, I used to laugh,” he mentioned. “They didn’t know all this came from my Christian mama.”

His mom handed away in 2014 from lupus, and Tech says his use of hospital scrubs is a tribute to her. He’s begun carrying the scrubs extra typically throughout interviews, prompting followers and reporters to ask concerning the symbolism.

“This is her garment,” he mentioned. “I wear it in honor of my late great mother, Marty Sue Yates Khalifa.”

The scrubs, the face paint, the killer-clown iconography is much less about shock worth and extra a few son making an attempt to make sense of the world he grew up in. And paying homage to his mom.

“I applied all of it to Tech N9ne,” he mentioned. “And it saved my life.”

Listen to Tech N9ne’s newest album 5816 Forest, his audio origin story.

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