Tech N9ne at Troc: Electro-dark humor from a scary clown

When Aaron Dontez Yates, the speed rapper/producer known as Tech N9ne, created the Strange Music label in 1999, he must have known his life's vocation.

Tech N9ne's sound consistently has been odd yet alluring - quick, industrialized hip-hop with incendiary, socially conscious, sci-fantasy lyrics that would make Harlan Ellison green with Martian envy. And Yates' rapid, chopping style makes Tech N9ne a dog whose bark might just be as bad as its bite.

Tech N9ne played the Trocadero on Wednesday night, with future-forward electro-rappers such as MURS and Chris Webby along for the ride. To an already moshing, thrashing crowd dressed heavily in Twiztid-style clown makeup, Tech N9ne hit the stage in similar maquillage (his logo of bright red slashes and a white base), dressed in baggy whites and coughing up the lyrics to the savage "E.B.A.H." Against the constant crack of hard-tech-core-metal, he rage-rapped lines such as:

What's my name?

Evil Brain, Angel Heart.

I'm a maniac

and I'm loving it.

Call me anything

but my government.

He sounded as if he were the unholy love-child of Eminem and H.R. from Bad Brains.

Humor abounded, in both Tech N9ne's lyrics ("Even when it's annoying like long nose hair / I can so share my heart in the cold air") and his arrangements (the inclusion of a gothic organ).

If not for that wit, much of his electro-metal sound and stagey, dramatic ire would have been overwrought and without nuance. Light was needed to balance his detritus-strewn mania.

But there was room. Ferocious bare-knuckle cuts such as "Am I a Psycho," the snarky "Caribou Lou," and the disgusted take on fame in "On the Bible," with its call to vengeance ("With my fortune, I'm-a get to torchin', like Orkin") had room to breathe fire, and were all the more effective - even menacingly threatening - for it.

Plus, face it, clowns are scary.

Chris Webby's performance had a bit of Eminem's nasality and white-guy angst, as in his throbbing, bass-heavy "Brim Low."

MURS, on the other hand, didn't sound angst-ridden at all.

Instead, the electro-vibe producer was the night's most cheerful face, with cool stuff (the ruminative "I Miss Mickey") from his new album, Have a Nice Life, as well as MURS classics such as "Okey Dog."