RAP + YUM CHA = WHAT’S UP

Remember Jin?  American-Born-Chinese battle emcee outta Miami-by-way-of-Flushing?  Didn’t he go on 106th & Park and rip some competition?  Didn’t he get signed to Ruff Ryders?  Didn’t I never hear anything about that record coming out, like, ever?  I’m sure there’s a ton of internet stuff on his activities since then… His Wikipedia is a good read, especially him tackling Miss Jones & Rosie O’Donnel for their racist anti-Asian antics…

We were just in Vietnam, living it up in the cheap hotels with the cable box.  Flipped around to Channel V Asia and there was Jin… Looking real comfortable and rapping entirely in Chinese…  So this is where I learn that Jin made an all-Chinese rap album called ABC or ‘American Born Chinese’…

I don’t understand most of what he’s saying, but there’s something undeniably infectious about his Cantonese swagger and cadence.  And his confident, comfortable smile in these clips gives you a sense that he’s really in his element… rapping using the dialect his family always spoke at home in the US, and impacting an appreciative audience in China… To quote Joe Biden “That’s a storybook, man…”  I dunno, it’s cool.

And, yes, anyone who is Asian, has an Asian partner or close friends, or just lives in Sydney can tell you that anyone who writes a song about Yum Cha earns about 500 awesomepoints by default.  So Jin gets the ‘Big Up Yourself’ award this week.