Mackenzie Nicole first surfaced as a pop singer in 2015 when she joined Tech N9ne on the collaborative album Strangeulation, Vol. 2 for the track “Actin Like You Know.” Although the Kansas City teenager was releasing music for the initial time, she already possessed industry ties through her father, Travis O’Guin, who had co-established the independent hardcore rap label Strange Music with Tech N9ne in 1999. The same song later appeared as a Mackenzie Nicole solo single after Tech N9ne’s verse was removed, just as she began studio work on her debut album. She returned in 2017 with three appearances on Dominion, the seventh Tech N9ne Collabos project, earning top billing on “Take You Down.” The singles “Anxious” and “Burn” surfaced between late 2017 and early 2018, setting the stage for the full-length The Edge that spring. Early the next year she delivered the non-album single “Complications,” which chronicled the emotional upheaval she faced after The Edge. Her follow-up album Mystic was conceived to illuminate mental health struggles; divided into three conceptual chapters, the set reached listeners in February 2020 and spotlighted the single “Heart of Darkness.”
