Mackenzie Nicole’s pop debut signals a new direction for Strange Music

“The reason I’m doing pop isn’t to be, like, some pop princess,” says Mackenzie Nicole, seated at a massive wooden conference table inside the Lee’s Summit headquarters of Strange Music. She’s confident and cheery, wearing a black leather jacket that lands somewhere between hard rock and hip hop. 

Technically, though, Nicole is something of a princess. As in: she’s Strange Music royalty. As in: her father, Travis O’Guin, co-founded the label in the basement of her old house. Nicole is 18 years old — roughly the same age as the label itself. 

“I love and respect Taylor Swift,” she continues. “But I don’t know if that’s something I want for myself. I have to be careful wording that, because I do love her, but different strokes for different folks, y’know?”

She likes how Rihanna did it. The Barbadian singer kicked off her career with club jams like “Pon de Replay,” then went on to try her hand in different genres. “She made the masterpiece that is Anti, but she built a foundation so that she could build and experiment without becoming a jack of all and master of none,” Nicole says. 

If a teenager in eastern Jackson County with global pop ambitions perhaps sounds a bit pie-in-the-sky, consider the following. Strange Music is one of the most successful independent record labels in the world. It has leveraged the popularity of its founding artist, Tech N9ne, into a subculture through which entire careers can be launched. Undergirding its success is a rabid, loyal fanbase that buys tickets, records, and merch in amounts that makes the Merges and Matadors of the world salivate. 

Since its inception, Strange Music has been a hip-hop label. But the release this month of Nicole’s debut, The Edge (April 13) marks a turning point. Nicole is the first artist on StrangeMain, a new, pop-oriented imprint underneath the larger banner of Strange Music. 

“We have this established machine that’s proven successful for us,” says O’Guin, citing the label’s vertically integrated structure of booking its own tours, screenprinting its own merch, and marketing itself via social media. “Hip-hop will always be the cornerstone of what Strange Music is about, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to limit ourselves to focusing on one genre of music.”

The Edge is not particularly edgy. It is full-on pop, with anthemic choruses and big, danceable beats that plainly aim for arenas. It’s a ways off from previous Strange Music contributions by Nicole, who made her official debut at the age of nine on the Tech N9ne song “Demons.” 

“It featured Three Six Mafia, and I wasn’t allowed to hear it after it was finished,” Nicole says, laughing. 

As she grew up, she continued to do features for other Strange Music artists, including Prozak and CES Cru, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that she recorded her first solo track, “Actin’ Like You Know,” on the Strangeulation Vol. II compilation. The song went on to become the biggest single from the comp, racking up over 3.5 million views on YouTube and nearly 2 million streams on Spotify.

“That made all of the execs look up and take notice,” Nicole says. 

The momentum led naturally to the decision to cut a proper record. But, contrary to the narrative of Nicole’s whole life steadily leading up to a Strange Music release, she says The Edge came together at a speed she almost wasn’t ready for. Ultimately, it was recorded with Mike Mani and Jordan Omley (known as The Jam) over the course of twelve studio days. 

“The album that you have and are hearing is very different than I anticipated,” Nicole says. “Literally, [we did] a song a day. Over the course of three months, there were twelve work days, and then I blinked, and my album was done. It was almost anticlimactic, because it was years of buildup just to have it be there, suddenly.”

Though much of The Edge hews close to universal, rote pop themes, Nicole occasionally leans in with something a little more raw and personal. On “Only With You,” the beat drops out, and Nicole offers a confessional: Even if I want, I can never be mad at you / I can never seem to keep my hands off your tattoos / I’ll do this forever / You’ll never find any better.  

“That song — which I rewrote and re-recorded — is the song that’s most written by me,” Nicole says. “When you co-write, things become more biographical than autobiographical. It was written at a different time than the rest of the album, and at a time where I was like, it felt right. I think you can feel the sincerity in that. It’s now become probably my favorite off the album.”

The big question about Nicole is whether the proudly subterranean Strange Music fan base will rally around her. The label’s core artists — Tech, Krizz Kaliko, Brotha Lynch Hung — write dark, abrasive raps. Are Nicole’s radio-ready songs a bridge too far? 

“The only person that the fans — who are family — are going to trust to execute this in a way that does Strange justice is me, because they know me,” she says. “They’ve grown up with me since I was nine years old. They knew me from being in the back, onstage, and during Tech’s tours before that.”

And maybe, in this increasingly fractured, post-genre music-and-media landscape, the pop label means less than the Strange label. As we’re wrapping up, Nicole indirectly alludes to this, noting her excitement about being added to this year’s Boulevardia festival in June. She whips out her phone and ticks off the names of the other performers. 

“Oh my god, I love Guster!” she says. “Tech N9ne and Guster? I think it just reiterates that we’re about music. Whenever you see a lineup like Boulevardia and the first name you see is Tech N9ne, and then you see Bleachers, you’re going to be confused. But then you go to a Tech N9ne show, and you get it.”