Tech N9ne is known for one of the most striking visual identities in Hip-Hop, but according to the Kansas City legend, every mask, clown face, and pair of hospital scrubs traces back to one person: his late mother, Maude “Marty” Sue Yates Khalifa. On this holiday, we reminisce on our conversation with the legend and his love for his mother.
In an interview with AllHipHop, Tech revealed that the dark, theatrical imagery that has followed him throughout his decades-long career wasn’t inspired by comics or horror. Nope, it was born from the hospitals, psychiatric wards and haunted houses he navigated as a child while watching his mother battle lifelong illness.
“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 told 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 changed when she remarried when Tech was 12.
Her new husband, a Muslim man, believed she needed psychiatric care after each seizure, which led to her being placed in several psychiatric facilities across Missouri. Those visits left an imprint on young Tech, especially seeing her dressed in oversized hospital scrubs during each stay.
“Every time I’d go visit her, she’d have on hospital scrubs,” he said. “That’s one level of it – the Michael Myers, the killer clown, the dark imagery. All of that came from real life.”
The other half of his unique aesthetic was shaped by his mother’s unusual parenting style.
A devout Christian, she still introduced her son to horror movies and Halloween culture at an early age. She took him to see Carrie in 1976 and the original Halloween premiere in 1978. She brought him through Kansas City haunted houses every October and to circus shows where he developed his childhood fear of clowns, a fear he later transformed into his famous “Killer Clown” persona.
But the most powerful lesson came from her insistence that dark imagery held no spiritual danger.
“She bought me a Dracula action figure,” Tech said. “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 guidance not only shaped his worldview but protected him creatively.
“So when people called me a devil worshipper, I used to laugh,” he said. “They didn’t know all this came from my Christian mama.”
His mother passed away in 2014 from lupus, and Tech says his use of hospital scrubs is a tribute to her. He’s begun wearing the scrubs more often during interviews, prompting fans and reporters to ask about the symbolism.
“This is her garment,” he said. “I wear it in honor of my late great mother, Marty Sue Yates Khalifa.”
The scrubs, the face paint, the killer-clown iconography is less about shock value and more about a son trying to make sense of the world he grew up in. And paying homage to his mother.
“I applied all of it to Tech N9ne,” he said. “And it saved my life.”
Listen to Tech N9ne’s latest album 5816 Forest, his audio origin story.
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