I.  Introduction

"Do the shows usually sell out?" I asked the man at Footwork over the phone.

"We always sell out," he answered soberly, failing to note the ideologically loaded double meaning of his response.

It was Labor Day weekend, 1998. I was on my way to Philadelphia to see a performance by the Mountain Brothers, a trio of lyrical Chinese Americans whose non-sell-out, hip-hop music "makes brothers say 'true,' sisters say 'ooh,' white folks say 'right on,' and yellows say 'finally....'"⁽¹⁾ Music critic Oliver Wang had called the Mountain Brothers "Asian America's best shot at hip hop glory."⁽²⁾ After reading through the group's extensive homepage on the World Wide Web, "Woody," "Alex," and I were eager to see their performance.

Footwork turned out to be a tiny, weathered record store on a lonely street on the northeastern edge of the city. Rows upon rows of metal folding chairs were crammed into the wooden-floored room, with a small stage at the far end. Outside Footwork, before the show began at 8 p.m., a small crowd began gathering on the narrow, dimly lit sidewalk. Woody, Alex, and I examined our discount admission flyers, a blue quarter-sheet with a caricature of a black teenage male grabbing his crotch with a shocked expression on his face. The Mountain Brothers were listed as just one of about eight performance groups. Styles (Steve Wei) and Peril-L (Chris Wong) appeared outside for a few minutes, inconspicuously and stoically nibbling on little cigar-looking stubs. Woody, Alex, and I, however, felt conspicuous as the only Asians in the crowd, and oddly dressed to boot: Woody in his peach iridescent "Miami Vice" shirt, Alex in his Akin, Gump-on-casual-day shirt and slacks, looking more L.L. Bean than LL Cool J, and myself in a dress. The others were black, white, Latino, mostly male, college-age or in their twenties, wearing worn-out T-shirts and jeans.

When the doors opened, everyone formed a single-file line, paid their six or eight dollars, and got a hip-hop variety mix cassette thrust into his or her hand. More and more people streamed in, crowding the room until the air thickened to a humid, sweltering mass of heat bad enough to rival a summer day in Taiwan. I noticed one East Asian man, but still in the mob of over 100 hip-hop fans, my friends and I were in the minority. Styles, Peril-L, and Chops sat in the audience to await their turn. Peril-L sat down next to Woody, still intensely chewing at his stub and staring into space.

The program began with an open mic, with African Americans rapping without music about police brutality and Mumia Abu-Jamal, a journalist on death row for killing a police officer.⁽³⁾ One young woman spoke about the horrors of prostitution while her friend accompanied her with a rendition of "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child." Throughout the show, audience members yelled out their support for the performers and their messages and nodded their heads in agreement. Soon enough, it was the Mountain Brothers' turn to rouse the audience.

The Mountain Brothers worked the stage like pros, beginning with "Galaxies" and ending with "Paperchase." Two fans, one black and one white, jerked their heads violently from side to side in unison as the music to "Paperchase" began:

It's all about the M-O-N-E
Why must everything revolve around the penny
I walk upon the streets without any
Tryin' to keep a steady pace
I'm on a Paperchase.⁽⁴⁾

In a scene reminiscent of student protests at Berkeley, the concert appeared to unite the racially diverse audience: young people on the margin, eager for social change, moving as one body. Some even wore dreadlocks and Rastafarian hand-knitted hats, looking like they had come off the streets of Telegraph Avenue.

Still, if I had listened to the Mountain Brothers' music without knowing that they were Asian American, I would have mistaken them for African Americans.⁽⁵⁾ In fact, the Mountain Brothers' lyrics do not explicitly refer to an Asian American identity, but instead present a critique of society from a perspective shared by other people of color. For example, "Paperchase" criticizes the individualistic greed engendered by capitalist society, echoing the following message of the internationally popular African American rap group Public Enemy:

Corporations owe
Dey gotta give up the dough
to da town
or else
we gotta shut 'em down⁽⁷⁾

Lyrics by the other Asian American rappers interviewed for this paper similarly address many of the same issues as African American rap groups.

Although most Asian American rap artists have remained prominent only within their own subculture, the emergence of Asian Americans gaining fame from grabbing the mic and rapping about social issues since the late 1980s is now a recognizable social trend. As a phenomenon, it seems puzzling for the same reason that a misidentification of the Mountain Brothers' lyrics and style as African American seems plausible. Why is it that young Asian Americans have been adopting an African American art form as their means of expression?

Chuck D of Public Enemy explained the widespread appeal of rap:

[Young people are] learning more from the videos and Rap songs than they're learning from the schools.  That's one of the reasons that Rap and other aspects of Black culture have crossed over so successfully into the mainstream, because young whites are able to get a heartfelt perspective through our music, which interprets our situations and expresses our feelings toward what's going on directly into their hearts and minds. It's almost like someone looking in a window from the outside.⁽⁸⁾

As a working hypothesis for explaining the phenomenon of Asian American rap, Chuck D's "window" raises as many questions as it answers. If rap is a transparent channel for the expression of Asian American as well as African American ideological perspectives, then Asian American rappers must be doing more than emulating sounds and rhythms. They are finding a voice in a form rooted in African and African American culture.⁽⁹⁾ But are these artists engaging in authentic self-expression, or false appropriation?⁽¹²⁾ How does the use of rap by Asian Americans differ from a white person grabbing the mic and rhyming?

To investigate these questions, I gathered information from listening to rap music; interviewing Asian American rappers in person, by phone, and over e-mail; and reading books and information disseminated through the World Wide Web. This paper argues that the authenticity of Asian American rap can be located in the lived experience of the artists themselves,⁽¹³⁾ by focusing on five groups and one solo performer: the Seoul Brothers, Fists of Fury, Yellow Peril, in-cite, the Mountain Brothers, and Jamez. In this analysis, I will also attempt to dissect the meaning of their works and explain the significance of rap music for Asian Americans.

II.  Formation

My earliest memories of rap include listening to Salt-n-Pepa and the Beastie Boys, and then rapping for my friends' amusement at Chinese camp at the University of Georgia in the summer of 1987. Rap was a bold way of expressing anger and attitude, both of which I had squelched in order to stay invisible as one of the few Asian Americans at a racially polarized, black-and-white high school. I never formed a rap group because I did not know any Asian Americans who were into rap, and I was quite isolated. I wish I had had the opportunity to form an Asian American rap group, so I would have had a chance to break out of the model minority stereotype and vent about all the racial animosity I felt growing up in the hicktowns of Georgia.

The members of the Asian American rap groups interviewed for this paper were fortunate enough to find others interested in rapping and performing together. All of the groups formed informally, beginning with appreciating rap music and gradually creating their own lyrics. Dates of formation were difficult for most of the interviewees to determine, because their ventures into rap music began as a hobby.

Steve Wei, Styles of the Mountain Brothers, began rapping around 1989, when he was in the tenth grade. "What really hooked me back then ... was Public Enemy. They had the most weirdest, noisiest beats and I would just listen to their tape over and over just hearing something new every time. I wore that tape out," Wei said in an interview with Funkidiculous Promotions.⁽¹⁴⁾

Scott Jung's interest in hip hop began with breakdancing and listening to Run-DMC. "I had my little boombox, a piece of cardboard, and my Run-DMC tape. And a Michael Jackson headband. I was a little nut," Jung said.⁽¹⁵⁾

Chris Wong's interest in rap emerged in the mid-1980s, as he enjoyed the sounds of the Fat Boys, Run-DMC, LL Cool J, Kool Moe Dee, and Public Enemy, among others.⁽¹⁶⁾ Wei met Jung (Chops) during high school and then met Wong (Peril-L) during the summer of 1991. All three joined up at Penn State between 1990-1992, forming the Mountain Brothers and adopting stage names.

Fists of Fury formed around 1991 or 1992 in San Francisco. Both Hana Choi and Darow Han were graduates of Columbia University and, like many of the Asian American rappers interviewed, fans of Public Enemy. Drawing "inspiration from politically-conscious, popular African American rappers of that time period, including Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions and Queen Latifah,"⁽¹⁷⁾ Fists of Fury performed primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area, with some performances in Binghampton and Manhattan, New York.

Twenty-six year-old Kevin Sakoda, formerly of in-cite, became interested in hip hop culture and rap in the sixth grade. Back then, around 1983 or 1984, he and his friends in Anaheim and Cerritos, California, were into breakdancing and listening to the music of the Sugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, and Run-DMC. "Everyone started by remembering our favorite songs," he says.

Sakoda met Randy and Ryan Onishi at the Orange County Buddhist Church, where he met most of his Asian American friends. When breakdancing started dying out in Southern California, Sakoda and his friends began deejaying at house parties and parties with their church group. in-cite, comprised of the Onishi brothers and Sakoda, formed around 1985-87.

The Seoul Brothers, comprised of brothers Michael and Raphael Park with the help of different deejays, formed in Seattle, Washington around 1987. Michael Park was "a rocker into Aerosmith" and a "disco kid" until he heard Run DMC's "Rock Box," a rap with a rock beat to it.⁽¹⁸⁾ Michael Park's childhood friend Steve Mayfield Jr., an African American, started rapping when rap was not yet mainstream and taught the Parks how to write lyrics. The Parks began listening to the Sugarhill Gang, Grand Master Flash, and Run-DMC.

Meanwhile, beginning at age thirteen, Raphael Park was working part-time at Arnold's, a video game arcade and fast food restaurant in Seattle's U District. The manager of Arnold's, Greg Jones, and Ed Locke, a Chinese American, founded Nasty Mix records, which was rapper Sir Mix-A-Lot's first label.

"Because I knew Greg, whenever Sir Mix-A-Lot was having a party ... at the Boys and Girls Club down the street, Greg would hire me out to sell tickets to these parties. Through that we got to meet a lot of the local hip-hoppers in the area, that's how we made a lot of contacts," said Raphael Park, now 27 and counseling young prisoners.⁽¹⁹⁾

Michael Park first rapped on his own at a high school homecoming assembly in 1987, driving the crowd wild. He also performed at one of Sir Mix-A-Lot's shows in Tacoma, when at the end of the show, Sir Mix-A-Lot challenged audience members to get onstage and prove it if they thought they could rap. A crowd formed near the stage, and Park joined them. After a while, people yelled, "Let the Chinese guy rap! We want to hear him!" Michael Park got to the microphone, took off his sweatshirt, revealing a T-shirt that read "Psycho MC," and began wowing the crowd.⁽²⁰⁾

"Everyone was laughing like he was gonna, you know, suck or something like that, so once he started rapping everyone's eyes opened up," Raphael Park recalls. "They just couldn't believe it. He rocked the house."⁽²¹⁾

In 1989 or 1990, the Seoul Brothers eventually joined up with deejay David Ford, whose father was African American and mother was Korean. Ford was "basically the mind behind all of the actual music. We were the lyricists. He was the one with all the technical knowledge to put together all the beats," Raphael Park said. "David would put ankle weights on his wrists so he could scratch faster. He was obsessed, a mad deejay."

Just as dedicated to performing as the Seoul Brothers, Yellow Peril formed in the fall of 1991, in response to campus controversy. Bert Wang and John Stewart met through Asian American organizations at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey and founded the Rutgers Asian American Coalition for Equality (RAACE). Stewart, who is hapa Korean, and Wang were involved with a campaign against a student newspaper that had published narratives written in language parodying Asian accents. After a three week campaign of student protests, the newspaper resumed publication after a brief freezing of funds. For their first performance, Yellow Peril wrote and performed a rap in response to the newspaper's actions at a Rutgers talent show. "We considered ourselves as an Asian American rap group, largely inspired by the likes of Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions, NWA and many old school greats," says Wang, who is now a member of the music group SuperChink in New York City.

Out of all the rappers, only James Chang (Jamez) cited Korean and Chinese music, in addition to Bob Dylan, Fred Ho, Run DMC and Public Enemy, as having influenced his musical development.⁽²²⁾ Born in the Bronx to immigrant parents and growing up in Los Angeles "in denial of his ethnicity," Chang began appreciating traditional Korean folk music in the early 1990s, during a trip to Korea.⁽²³⁾ He purchased compact discs of pansori music and merged it with Chinese, Indian, and Bengali musical elements to create the backdrop for his raps. He founded his own record label, F.O.B. (Fresh Off the Boat) Productions, in 1997 and released his debut album, "Z-Bonics," in the summer of 1998.

III.  Analysis

Almost all of the Asian American rappers interviewed grew up in areas with few Asian Americans. The experiences of being an ethnic minority facing hostility and discrimination pervades all of their stories, resulting in a heightened sense of ethnic identity⁽²⁴⁾ and the development of an affinity with African American rap music.

A.  Increased Racial Awareness

Hana Choi immigrated from Korea when she was eleven years old and attended a high school in New York City which was about one-third Asian American. Still, the relatively greater number of Asian Americans did not shelter her from the realities of racism. "I was influenced by Public Enemy and it was a perfect form for expressing anger. I wanted to stir shit up," Choi says of those days.⁽²⁵⁾

The other rappers grew up in areas where Asian faces were few and far between. Darow Han immigrated to the United States from Korea at the age of one. He grew up in northwest Pennsylvania, and then in the Washington, DC suburban area, both middle-class, white communities. Kevin Sakoda, a fourth-generation Japanese American, was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Huntington Beach, which was predominately white middle-class.

"I felt a little bit of racism, not a lot," Sakoda, who now works in marketing, says. "I wasn't beat up or anything, but I felt like I didn't fit in."⁽²⁶⁾

Sakoda treated school as a duty and made his friends through the Buddhist church. The ethnic church provided him a means of "escape."⁽²⁷⁾ That was where he met the friends who formed in-cite. The group performed in 1990-91 at many Asian American clubs in Los Angeles, with the help of promoter Doug Kangawa. They also traveled to perform at the Cherry Blossom Festival and Cow Palace in San Francisco, Stanford University, University of Oregon, and Oberlin College, always receiving positive responses from their Asian American audiences.

Other rap groups emerged out of marginalized childhoods. Steve Wei was born in Madison, Wisconsin and grew up in Philadelphia's suburbs, "where there were few Asians."⁽²⁸⁾ Bert Wang was born in New York City and lived in New Jersey, the Virgin Islands, and Austin, Texas as a child. As he grew up in mostly white, working-class neighborhoods, there were also few Asians around. "[I] grew up in the face of many a confrontation, some of which turned into fights," Wang says.⁽²⁹⁾

Wang described his childhood in the rap "Yellow":

When I was growin up it was hard to find a smile
In a snow white world I was just a yellow child
Hey chinky boy what's wrong with your eyes
Your face is flat I listened to the lies
Hated me berated me it slowly took effect
I didn't understand my self respect was wrecked ...

On Halloween night those suckers went too far
The next day we found gook written on our car
We went to the cops they didn't wanna hear it
Because they were blue they didn't give a shit
Now I understand this childhood event
Racist bullshit we just couldn't prevent ...⁽³⁰⁾

Known together as Yellow Peril, Wang and John Stewart performed mostly for Asian American student organizations from Florida to Wisconsin and all over the northeast. They performed at New York City's Asian Pacific American Heritage Festival and concluded with a final show at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in November of 1995.

Like Bert Wang, the Seoul Brothers also experienced their share of racial incidents involving taunts and police conflicts, common themes in African American raps. Michael and Raphael Park immigrated to the United States from Korea when Raphael was less than a year old and Michael was two-and-a-half years old. Their father was a graduate student at the University of Washington, and the family lived near the university's fraternity and sorority houses. The fraternity and sorority members called the Park children "chinks" and "boaters," even chasing them down the streets.⁽³¹⁾

An episode of police harassment during college, culminating in legal wrangles and a feeling of community abandonment, stands out vividly in the Parks' memories. One evening in 1991, University of Washington police arrested them for making an illegal turn out of an alley, obstruction of justice, and trumped up charges that they were later acquitted of. The Parks had been on their way with some African American friends to an Alpha (African American fraternity) party.

"I guess they automatically assumed we were gang members and basically started roughing us up and arrested us. They found out after we were arrested that several of us were U.W. students, Mike wrote a column in the [university's] paper, and of course they had to trump up these charges because they didn't want to get sued," says Raphael Park. "The real bullshit was that it cost us $10,000 in litigation."⁽³²⁾

To add insult to injury, none of Michael Park's cohorts from the Asian and Pacific Islander Student Union attended the five-day jury trial to show their support. The feelings of abandonment by and disillusionment with Asian Americans were expressed through the Seoul Brother's rap, "I Got Your Back":

Yellow brothers and sisters I see
Are fakin' perpetrating like Barbie and Ken
Then, pointin' their fingers at fellas like me
Saying yo, he's an F.O.B.

But what does this mean, fresh off the boat,
Read what history wrote
And note, the white man came from across the sea,
Just like you and me⁽³³⁾

With this rap, the Seoul Brothers acknowledged friction between Asian Americans and drew awareness to greater oppression from biased history books. At about the same time, further south on the west coast, Fists of Fury and in-cite also addressed the same issues. In their rap "Overstand," in-cite urged unity and the formation of a historical memory:

when you elevate your mind, you alleviate hard times
and realize we should be coming together for banks
not fighting for nickels and dimes hating for no reason ...
where do you spend your money
whose history do you study
i'm working on the railroad, now my hands are bloody⁽³⁴⁾

With other raps about Asian male sexuality, stereotypes, and social commentary, mixed in with some braggadocio, from 1988 to 1991, the Seoul Brothers educated audiences at grade schools, community colleges, University of Washington talent shows, a Black Festival, and an Asian American music festival. They also opened for Attallah Shabazz, daughter of Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz, when she was a guest speaker at the University of Washington.

The Seoul Brothers and other Asian American rappers thereby continued the tradition of rap as a way of educating the masses, establishing fan bases through colleges and ethnic venues where young adults were eager to hear their vibrant messages. Rap music, particularly for the members of Fists of Fury, Yellow Peril, and the Seoul Brothers, allowed Asian Americans to reveal personal experiences of racism and break the image that Asian Americans faced few problems in assimilating.

B. Challenging the Model Minority Myth

In 1987, roughly the time when Asian American rappers became attracted to rap music, Time magazine published its now-infamous article "The New Whiz Kids; Why Asian-Americans Are Doing So Well, And What It Costs Them." The article painted an overall rosy picture of the lives of Asian Americans and popularized the term "model minority."⁽³⁵⁾

Further propelling the model minority myth, Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States, an interpretation of 1980 census statistics, praised Japanese Americans because "they most resemble whites socially and demographically," and repeatedly chastised Vietnamese Americans as being "least like whites" and more like "'castelike' minorities-- blacks, American Indians, and Hispanics."⁽³⁶⁾ The report went on to state that the "longer immigrants had resided in the United States, the more they resembled white Americans socially. Or outdid white Americans."⁽³⁷⁾ The authors perpetuated the idea that white America is the central group to emulate, and that in order to succeed, Asian Americans must shun "castelike minorities" and their culture.

The model minority myth dislocated Asian American students as co-dependent on the white authority structure and its values and ideals.⁽³⁸⁾ A recent study of Asian American high school students found the pernicious effects of internalized racism:

[S]tudents ... revealed an almost obsessive concern with what whites thought of them. In their efforts to gain white acceptance, Korean-identified students looked down on other Asian groups as being less "white-like," while the Asian New Wavers resisted becoming engaged in school in order to distance themselves from the "nerd" stereotype, an offshoot of the model minority image. Asian-identified students were willing to tolerate rather than challenge prejudice, hoping this would earn them respect from their white peers.⁽³⁹⁾

Instead of tolerating prejudice, distancing themselves from African American culture, and entertaining hopes of assimilation, Asian American rappers resisted the racialized placing of Asian Americans as part of the buffer zone between whites and blacks, and they attacked the stereotypes of being passive and weak. Drs. Woo Sik Chung and John Pardeck, professors of social work, noted that Asian American youths "have exhibited a greater sense of isolation, anxiety, and alienation than did their Anglo-American counterparts" and promoted empowerment as the remedy.⁽⁴⁰⁾ Forming their music groups and joining the hip hop culture allowed the rappers to cope with feelings of powerlessness and alienation.⁽⁴¹⁾

C. The Rappers' Historical Context

The late 1980s and early 1990s saw a surge in Asian American activism. There were nationwide movements for Japanese American redress and reparations, and student calls for Asian American Studies and Ethnic Studies at colleges and universities.⁽⁴²⁾ Soon after the 1987 model minority article in Time magazine, Asian Americans noticed the disparities in Asian Americans' college admittance rates and demanded investigations into college admissions policies.⁽⁴³⁾ The highly publicized tenure denials of Marcy Li Wang at the University of California at Berkeley and Don Nakanishi at UCLA also spurred student and community activism.⁽⁴⁴⁾

Yellow Peril, the only Asian American rap group to form in response to a specific racial incident, emerged in New Jersey in an environment of racial hostility. Beginning in 1986, Asian Americans in New Jersey were targetted for violence by teenagers known as the "Dotbusters." In 1987, Latino teens beat Navroz Mody, a young businessman, to death with bricks. Hudson County Prosecutor Paul DePascale refused to label it as a racially-motivated crime though even he admitted there was no other motive for Mody's beating death.⁽⁴⁵⁾ In 1989, Jersey City police officer John Chisulo beat and kicked Rodin and Minerva Rodriguez when he showed up to investigate an explosion outside the couple's store. The city did nothing, Filipino community leaders did nothing, and Chisulo was promoted.⁽⁴⁶⁾

Yellow Peril members Bert Wang and John Stewart broke through the New Jersey Asian American community's pattern of silence when they spoke out against the offensive "yellow-face" satire in the Rutgers University student newspaper. At their school talent show, Yellow Peril rapped:

they should be beaten on
and thrown in jail
I'd beat em all myself but I can't afford the bail
dumb ass racists always cryin
we were just kiddin
motherfucker stop lyin⁽⁴⁷⁾

With these lyrics, the rappers exposed the falseness of the white student journalists' claim of neutrality in determining that their satire was humorous and inoffensive.

"It was lotsa fun and we got to vent a lotta anger. HA! . . . We talked a lotta shit about [the newspaper writers]," said Wang, whose new band SuperChink has themes similar to those of Yellow Peril and will release an album by year's end. "We chose rap because neither of us could sing. But also because rap was a modern voice of political dissent and anger at the establishment."

D.  Identification with African Americans

The experiences of alienation and discrimination were expressed in many of the groups' raps, and all of the Asian American rappers mentioned being influenced by African American writers and rappers. Both Steve Wei and Raphael Park noted the influence of The Autobiography of Malcolm X on their consciousness of race relations.

"The Autobiography of Malcolm X was a book that really made me see things in a whole different light. I read that at a time in my life where I was questioning my identity and it really turned me toward a much more political bent," Wei said.⁽⁴⁸⁾

Park first read about Malcolm X when he was in the eighth grade, after his employer and friend Greg Jones recommended the book. "Even though I'm not black, I really relate to a lot of the things he wrote about, the experiences. That book really changed my life," Raphael Park says.⁽⁴⁹⁾

Park began reading more African American literature, including Manchild in the Promised Land and The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass. "It was a quest for my own identity in part. I got really into this whole African American political ideology and ... it had a big influence on the lyrics that I wrote," he says, adding that his brother Michael then read the same books and was similarly influenced.⁽⁵⁰⁾

Listening to African American rappers and reading African American literature increased Asian Americans' social awareness so that their lyrics mirrored each other. For example, critiques of media stereotypes in raps by Yellow Peril, Fists of Fury, and the Seoul Brothers mirrored the lyrics of Big Daddy Kane and Chuck D's rap "Burn Hollywood Burn":

In the movies portrayin' the roles
Of butlers and maids slaves and hoes
Many intelligent black men seem to look uncivilized
when on the screen
Like a guess I figure you play some jigaboo
On the plantation, what else can a nigger do ...

So Step and fetch this shit
for all the years we looked like clowns
the joke is over smell the smoke from all around
Burn Hollywood burn⁽⁵¹⁾

Yellow Peril addressed its anger at the media's use of white actors portraying Asians and stereotypical roles given to Asian American women in their rap "Asian for the Man":

Hollywood's history of disrespectin our race
Kinda reminds me of Al Jolson's black face
Let's look at Charlie Chan played by a white man
They taped up his eyes to try to disguise
A white boy spoutin fortune cookie bullshit ...

They say it's just movies just tv just acting
But it serves another purpose in this society
Programmin self hate for a racist ideology

...

Yo David Carradine you shoulda learned from the start
You're an unskilled white boy who's pimpin the arts

...

Many Asian sisters made to Hollywood hos
Pimped by the industry fulfillin white fantasy
If you don't know what I'm sayin I'll tell you explicitly
That fuckin Broadway show about an oriental ho
Totally dependent on gwai lo G.I. Joe
For his blue eyes and American bravery
Tryin to subject her to race and gender slavery⁽⁵²⁾

"Asian for the Man" thus educated audiences about the historical depictions of Asian Americans and also supported the Miss Saigon protesters in neighboring New York City with a critique of the Broadway musical.⁽⁵³⁾ Yellow Peril also attacked the popularity of white actors representing martial arts in "KFC":

Fuck Chuck Norris Jean-Claude Damme
They use techniques like the slo-motion cam
Monkey-see monkey-do they try to imitate Kung Fu
Before you study martial arts you should get yourself a clue...

You don't got what it takes to be in Kung Fu Cinema⁽⁵⁴⁾

Yellow Peril's disgust at whites gaining fame and fortune through an Asian art form paralleled the feelings Public Enemy had for Elvis Presley, whose fame was a result of imitating African American singers:

Elvis was a hero to most
But he never meant shit to me
He was a straight out racist
That sucker was simple and plain
Motherfuck him and John Wayne⁽⁵⁵⁾

Through such lyrics, rap artists answer bell hooks's call for "counter-hegemonic art" to combat negative and stigmatizing stereotypes.⁽⁵⁶⁾ In the case of Asian Americans, whose arrival in many social arenas has been preceded by countless media stereotypes, the struggle for authenticity is especially urgent. As anthropologist Janis Faye Hutchinson notes, "The media have always been conveyors of identities, impacting readers', viewers', and listeners' perceptions of social phenomena.... For individuals outside the representational group, it may provide the only characterization of other ethnic groups that these individuals will experience."⁽⁵⁷⁾

Chuck D of Public Enemy said of media stereotypes, "I understand the realities of life in the entertainment business. The knock is on the networks and station groups and the imbalanced picture that gets presented. And people wonder why a person like me is mad?"⁽⁵⁸⁾

E. Rap's appeal to Asian Americans

Being mad about racism like Chuck D, was just one of the reasons why most of the Asian American rappers' decided to express themselves through rap. James Chang (Jamez) looked to Public Enemy and Leonard Cohen as inspirations for his own music, because he "identified with their feelings of alienation" and wanted to "compose something that dealt with social issues.... I guess music provided an outlet for me to say, 'Hey, I can fight back.'"⁽⁵⁹⁾

Kevin Sakoda was drawn to rap although he and his friends "didn't really come from the 'hood" and instead were "blessed to be brought up in good neighborhoods."⁽⁶⁰⁾ Their raps were not overtly angry, instead addressing topics such as rappers who portrayed a false ghetto image, women, battle rhymes, and being Asian.

Writer and music critic Oliver Wang hypothesized that Asian Americans have gotten into rap music partly because "hip hop has been the dominant youth culture/music in the 80s and 90s....

"But more so, ... hip hop is seen as such a powerful medium of expression - thanks to the pioneering efforts of hip hop artists in the black communnity - many youth of color have tried to tap into hip hop as a way of getting across their own realities and messages," said Wang, a UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies graduate student writing his dissertation on the history of Asian American music.

Both Kevin Sakoda and Raphael Park agreed that rap music appealed to them partly because it was the popular music at the time. "If I'd been growing up in a different time, it could've been different, something that grabbed me.... Rap was just closer to my heart. I'm part of the hip hop culture and it's a part of me," said Sakoda.

"Maybe if it was fifty years ago, maybe I would be singing the blues or something like that but I think it had to do with the time," Park mused, adding that he was drawn to rap because rap was "people just speaking their minds. Like Grand Master Flash had a message about street life in New York, and it was just honest, very real, and that's what appealed to me. It wasn't watered down, and there's probably that thing that it was a little taboo, that it wasn't totally accepted at that time."⁽⁶¹⁾

Both Kevin Sakoda and Steve Wei said that they did not purposefully choose hip hop as a form of expression, but "it chose me."⁽⁶²⁾

Speaking for the Mountain Brothers, Wei said, "We just grew up as lovers of hip-hop culture and music. It's only natural that when you love something you want to then try and do it and add back to the culture."

F. Making It Big

The Mountain Brothers have devoted much time to perfecting their art while first juggling their music with academics at Penn State, and now balancing music with other responsibilities. Wei is a medical student at Temple University, Wong works at a pharmaceutical company, and Jung produces music for other hip hop groups. Their hard work and perseverance paid off with a nationally-aired Sprite radio commercial in 1996, performances in various states, and the independent release of their album "Self, Vol. 1" in October 1998.⁽⁶³⁾

Yet in trying to make it big as a hip hop group, the Mountain Brothers have broadened their appeal by not marketing themselves as Asian American rappers. "[W]e usually try and stay away from those kinds of categories. We don't really see the point.... In a sense all of our songs have an Asian American edge to them, simply because we are Asian American and we wrote those songs. Basically, we want to make the best hip-hop songs possible, and Asian American issues is something we want to address, but in a way that makes the best song," said Wei.⁽⁶⁴⁾

Being a more overtly Asian American rap group led to the Seoul Brother's frustration. They tried to market their music in the early 1990s, but the record producers and promoters "laughed [them] off.

No one thought that an Asian American rapper was marketable. No one was really taking us seriously, even though I thought there was a market that we appealed to," said Raphael Park, who said the greatest insult was a performance idea proposed by the president of Nasty Mix records, Ed Locke, who was a Chinese American.⁽⁶⁵⁾

Weird Al Yankovic had released a parody of Vanilla Ice's rap "Ice Ice Baby" that was entitled "Rice Rice Baby." Locke wanted the Seoul Brothers to perform the Weird Al parody. Recalling the phone conversation with Locke, Park said, "Motherfucker, he wanted to have us jump out of some Chinese takeout boxes. He wanted us to totally sell out, do some Jerry Lewis ridiculous type stuff."⁽⁶⁶⁾

Park refused to demean himself with a "Rice Rice Baby" rendition. With little interest from the music industry and the departure of David Ford, who began working for Sir Mix-A-Lot, the Seoul Brothers gradually stopped performing around 1993 or 1994 after graduating from college.

"The industry was real flaky.... As far as a novelty act a lot of people appreciated us, but when it came down to it, nobody really supported what we were doing," Park said.⁽⁶⁷⁾

Neither Yellow Peril nor Fists of Fury became popular in the mainstream, but that did not matter much to Hana Choi. "We were more interested in spreading our political message. We produced our own music and sold our tapes. We knew that our material was not commercially viable," Choi said.⁽⁶⁸⁾ Since Fists of Fury dissolved around 1993 or 1994, Choi has embarked on a solo singing career, no longer rapping about Asian American history and Korean- African American tensions, but instead serenading listeners with ballads about sex and emotions.⁽⁶⁹⁾

"I wanted to pursue a singing career and produce more commercially viable music so that my records would hit number one in U.S.," said Choi, who now co-hosts the radio show "The Cutting Edge" on KIEV 870AM in Los Angeles. "My ideologies also had developed, and I wasn't interested in approaching the world with angry attitude. I was more interested in causing gradual social change."⁽⁷⁰⁾

Reflecting on his Seoul Brother days, Raphael Park said, "I think it was therapeutic at the same time, because we had a lot of things we wanted to say and we wanted to be heard. It was a lot of fun, and I think that's the heart of hip hop, just do it because you love it."⁽⁷¹⁾

IV. Conclusion

Rap music has emerged as an avenue by which Asian Americans can express their views on any topic, but particularly racism and societal problems. Since the 1980s, Asian American rap artists have entered the African American-created world of rap music and hip hop culture, drawing legitimacy and inspiration from a shared experience of exclusion and marginalization.

"Through Rap music I've seen people all over the world magnetized to thoughts and ideas. My goal is to be used as a viaduct, as a dispatcher of information," said rapper Chuck D.⁽⁷²⁾

As they travelled to perform at college campuses and other venues, Asian American rappers also became dispatchers of information. As Yellow Peril stated in "How Many More," a rap about anti-Asian violence, "When it's not talked about, it explodes in confrontation; The history of hate crimes has left its bloody legacy."⁽⁷³⁾ Rap was the "ideal medium for expressing the content of [their] lyrics,"⁽⁷⁴⁾ because of the historical roots of the musical form and the ability to convey much information in a single song.

Korean American journalist K.W. Lee, who was also a family friend of the Seoul Brothers, noted that Asian Americans "are not seen as a compassionate people. Others see us as smart, hard-working, and good at making money-- but not as sharing with others. We are not seen as a people who march at the forefront of the struggle for civil rights or the campaign to end poverty."⁽⁷⁵⁾ Through rap music and allying themselves with hip hop culture, Asian Americans have been able to resist being used as racial middlemen for the dominant society, show solidarity with other people of color, and establish themselves as part of American society. LeRoi Jones described the importance of creating a presence in America in order to become accepted as an integral, permanent part of society:

[U]ntil the time when you have sufficient ideas about this new country to being making some lasting moral generalizations about it-- relating your experience, in some lasting form, in the language of that country, with whatever subtleties and obliqueness you bring to it-- you are merely a transient.⁽⁷⁶⁾

With their recordings and performances, Asian Americans have been able to claim a piece of America for themselves and disseminate their critiques of society. Because they have shared similar experiences with African Americans and similar desires for social change, Asian American rappers legitimately have used and can continue to use rap as their own form of expression.

1. Mountain Brothers, Mountain Brothers homepage (visited September 5, 1998) .

2. Oliver Wang, Partners in Rhyme, A. Magazine, 1997.

3. See generally Mumia Abu-Jamal, Teetering on the Brink: Between Death and Life, 100 Yale L.J. 993 (1991) (describing conditions on Pennsylvania's Death Row).

4. Mountain Brothers, Paperchase, on Self, Vol. 1 (1998).

5. As the group is aware, many of its listeners have felt the same way. Styles is not bothered, however, by this mistaken identity. "If people dig our music first and then find out that we're Asian," he says, "it's like they get blown away by that because it's so unexpected and end up digging us even more. That's some of the kind of phenomenon that we want to create."⁽⁶⁾

6. Oliver Wang, Hip Hop Asian America, AsianWeek, October 1998.

7. Public Enemy, Shut 'em down, on Apocalypse 91 ... The Enemy Strikes Black (Def Jam Recordings, 1991).

8. Chuck D & Yusuf Jah, Fight the Power: Rap, Race, & Reality 34 (1997).

9. Chuck D of Public Enemy explained, "Rap is a vocal over music.... It's a vocal application that started back in the days as overdub by Jamaican toasters who would grab the microphone and rhythmically speak in their patois lingo over reggae dub beats."⁽¹⁰⁾

10. Chuck D & Yusuf Jah, Fight the Power: Rap, Race, & Reality 247 (1997). " "⁽¹¹⁾

11. Id. at 250.

12. Cf. Frank Chin, Come All Ye Asian American Writers of the Real and the Fake, in The Big Aiiieeeee: An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature 50 (Jeffrey P. Chan et al. eds., 1991) (criticizing inauthentic forms of Asian American narrative).

13. The authenticity of music can be found in its expression of true social conditions and experiences of its creators. See, e.g., LeRoi Jones, Blues People: The Negro Experience in White America and the Music that Developed from It 137 (1963):

The most expressive Negro music of any given period will be an exact reflection of what the Negro himself is. It will be a portrait of the Negro in America at that particular time. Who he thinks he is, what he thinks America or the world to be, given the circumstances, prejudices, and delights of that particular America. Negro music and Negro life in America were always the result of a reaction to, and an adaptation of, whatever American Negroes were given or could secure for themselves.

14. Funki, Funkidiculous Promotions homepage (visited September 5, 1998) .

15. Id.

16. Id.

17. Internet interview with Darow Han, formerly of Fists of Fury (October 10, 1998).

18. Interview with Raphael Park, formerly of the Seoul Brothers, in Seattle, Wash. (September 26, 1998).

19. Id.

20. Telephone interview with Michael Park, formerly of the Seoul Brothers (October 11, 1998).

21. Interview with Raphael Park, supra.

22. See Merle English, Artist Finds Voice in Hip-Hop Hybrid, Newsday, Jan. 18, 1998.

23. Alvin Eng, Millenium Rap; Jamez: Aziatic hip hop for the masses, if they dare, Long Island Voice, April 9-15, 1998.

24. Sociologists suggest that a high degree of ethnic identity is a response to isolation, insecurity, unfamiliarity and relative powerlessness. See Janis Faye Hutchinson, Cultural Portrayals of African Americans 146 (1997).

25. Internet interview with Hana Choi, formerly of Fists of Fury, (October 12, 1998).

26. Telephone interview with Kevin Sakoda, formerly of In*cite (November 10, 1998).

27. Id.

28. Internet interview with Steve Wei, Member of the Mountain Brothers (October 10, 1998).

29. Internet interview with Bert Wang, formerly of Yellow Peril (October 10, 1998).

30. Yellow Peril, "Yellow" (date unknown).

31. Telephone interview with Michael Park, supra.

32. Interview with Raphael Park, supra.

33. Id.

34. In*cite, "Overstand," (date unknown).

35. David Brand, The New Whiz Kids; Why Asian-Americans Are Doing So Well, and What It Costs them, Time magazine, August 31, 1987.

36. Herbert R. Barringer et al., Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States 316, 318 (1993).

37. Id. at 318.

38. Mia Tuan, Unraveling the "Model Minority" Stereotype: Listening to Asian American Youth, in 1 Journal of Asian American Studies 198, 200 (1998) (book review).

39. Id.

40. Woo Sik Chung and John T. Pardeck, Treating Powerless Minorities Through An Ecosystem Approach, Adolescence, October 11, 1997, citing D.W. Sue, Counseling the Culturally Different (1985).

41. See id., citing E. Pinderhughes, Empowerment For Our Clients And For Ourselves, in Journal of Contemporary Social Work (1983) (people can cope with feelings of powerlessness by embracing values including "fatalism, high spirituality, living for today, and banding together" or by having support groups).

42. William Wei, The Asian American Movement 153-54 (1993).

43. Id. at 155-56.

44. Id. at 158.

45. Rita Chaudhry Sethi, Smells Like Racism: A Plan for Mobilizing Against Anti-Asian Bias, in The State of Asian America: Activism and Resistance in the 1990s 244-45 (Karin Aguilar-San Juan ed., 1994).

46. Steve DeCastro, id. at 306-07.

47. Yellow Peril, rap in response to newspaper, 1991.

48. Funki, Funkidiculous Promotions homepage, supra.

49. Interview with Raphael Park, supra.

50. Id.

51. Big Daddy Kane and Chuck D, "Burn Hollywood Burn" (date unknown).

52. Yellow Peril, Asian for the Man (date unknown).

53. Steven De Castro, Identity in Action: A Filipino American's Perspective, in The State of Asian America: Activism and Resistance in the 1990s 302 (Karin Aguilar-San Juan ed., 1994); Yoko Yoshikawa, The Heat is On Miss Saigon Coalition, in id. at 275-77 (protesters chanted at the musical's debut, "Racist, Sexist Broadway Hit-- Why do you pay to see this shit?").

54. Yellow Peril, "Kung Fu Cinema" (date unknown).

55. Public Enemy, Fight the Power, on Fear of a Black Planet (Def Jam Records 1990).

56. See generally bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics (1990).

57. Janis Faye Hutchinson, Cultural Portrayals of African Americans: Creating An Ethnic /Racial Identity, 3 (Janis Faye Hutchinson ed. 1997).

58. Chuck D and Yusuf Jah, supra at 7.

59. Merle English, id.

60. Telephone interview with Kevin Sakoda, supra.

61. Interview with Raphael Park, supra.

62. Telephone interview with Kevin Sakoda, supra; Internet interview with Steve Wei, supra.

63. The group originally signed on with Ruffhouse Records, which was the record label for the nationally known groups Cypress Hill, Kriss Kross, and the Fugees.

64. Internet interview with Steve Wei, supra.

65. Interview with Raphael Park, supra.

66. Id.

67. Id.

68. Internet interview with Hana Choi, supra.

69. Hana Ra, Hana's Homepage (visited September 8, 1998) .

70. Id.

71. Interview with Raphael Park, supra.

72. Chuck D and Yusuf Jah, Fight the Power: Rap, Race, and Reality 5 (1997).

73. Yellow Peril, "How Many More" (date unknown).

74. Internet interview with Darow Han, supra.

75. Glenn Omatsu, The 'Four Prisons' and the Movements of Liberation, in The State of Asian America: Activism and Resistance in the 1990s 64-65 (Karin Aguilar-San Juan ed., 1994).

76. Leroi Jones, id. at xii.