Then there’s New York City’s own Freestyle Friday champ, MC Jin. I was like, ‘Yo, this feels something familiar.’” “I was into kung-fu and anime, the album cover almost had anime illustrations of all three of them. He is currently collaborating with Mountain Brothers’s Chops. “The first time I ever heard of these dudes was because I had that iconic experience of walking in and flipping through albums, seeing cover art, and seeing the name already,” Chu said. The members of Mountain Brothers were Scott Jung (Chops), Christopher Wang (Peril-L), and Steve Wei (Styles Infinite), a trio of Chinese American rappers who, on songs like “Paperchase,” off their 1999 record, Self: Volume 1, showcase their lyrical mastery: “Lemme state my case about the paperchase / I know it’s hard tryin’ to escape the pace / Of the fast lane situated in a gold-plated Camry, Lex, or Benz / But what about support-related family checks for friends?” In 1996, despite experiencing racism while courting labels (a rep reportedly told them to dress up on stage in karate gis and rap battle with gongs behind them) Philadelphia’s Mountain Brothers became the first Asian American hip-hop group to secure a major label deal with Ruffhouse/Columbia Records, whose roster included The Fugees, Cypress Hill, Kris Kross, Wyclef Jean, and Lauryn Hill. On the East Coast, the late Fresh Kid Ice, Mountain Brothers, and MC Jin all reflected the cross-cultural solidarity that hip-hop presented. Some of the first Asian American artists to gain recognition in hip-hop in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s are a testament to Chu’s theory. “These strict racial boundaries and boundaries of cultural origin that work well in theory completely fall apart when you look at how and where people live and interact.” “I think we got to have this liberating, grounded, real understanding of what America is and what American communities are,” he said. They were resettled right into the hood.”Ĭhu argues that the product of this proximity is a culture that is rooted in solidarity. “Vietnamese communities, Laotian, Khmer, South Asians-When we came to this country, especially the refugee population, it was not like Viet folks or Hmong folks were resettled into bougie suburban white areas. “I think what a lot of people don’t understand is that we are embedded in and proximal to communities,” said Chu. While a definitive history of Asian Americans in hip-hop is fragmented, Chinese-American rapper, activist, and educator Jason Chu believes that one can trace its contours via the circumstances of immigration to the US and the resulting exchange that happens when cultures meet. have become household names foregrounding their AAPI heritage. Still, it’s only been in the past few years that artists like Anderson. It would be careless to document a history of Asian Americans in hip-hop without mentioning figures like Chad Hugo of The Neptunes, Dan “The Automator” Nakamura, DJ Qbert and Invisibl Skratch Piklz, Geologic of Blue Scholars, Far East Movement, apl.de.ap of Black Eyed Peas, Awkwafina, Lyrics Born, Guapdad 4000, Jay Park, Raja Kumari, Year of the Ox, Flowsik, Stupid Young, MBNel, China Mac, Cool Calm Pete, P-Lo, Chow Mane, Spence Lee, Bohan Phoenix, Anik Khan, Ted Park, Kid Trunks, Snacky Chan, Bambu, Ruby Ibarra, Rocky Rivera, G Yamazawa, and the entire Beatrock Music roster. Many Asian American rappers have been accepted for their rap purist’s perspective, being mindful of the genre born from Black and brown youth in the South Bronx in the late ‘70s. To honor AAPI contributions to hip-hop is to understand that our community isn’t a monolith-the genre has produced rappers from many different ethnic backgrounds, who come from cities near hip-hop hubs across America, and are byproducts of the rap eras they came up in.
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