Wed, Apr 26, 2000 page11

• Keeping it real

  A local rap group is hacking through the soft superficiality of the island's pop scene to offer a hard-edged, reality-based vision of Taiwanese society

  • By Jay Speiden / STAFF REPORTER
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  MC Hotdog and his crew are having their picture taken. Huddled together on the roof of a downtown Taipei apartment building, they are doing their best to project a B-boy style into the lens of the camera.

  Dressed in oversized jerseys and sporting baseball hats, tattoos, chains and baggy pants, they're doing a pretty good job. "Get mean! they yell at Jerry Long, the hulking enforcer of the group, who has suddenly been overcome with the giggles. The rest of the group squats on the ledge of the building, drinking from large bottles of Taiwan beer and passing around a cigarette. They swagger, flip the bird, wrestle and laugh. Basically, they do all they can to look like rap stars to look legit.

  MC Hotdog formed the group about eight months ago when he and local Taiwanese rapper Jerry Long met up with an overseas Chinese rapper named Tim Huang. Charles Wooten, a US rapper from the Bronx, joined later to round out the foursome.

  All of the members speak fluent Chinese while Hotdog, Long and Huang speak Taiwanese as well. And once the photo shoot is over and they begin to speak, it doesn't take long to see that behind all their posturing, the members of MC Hotdog have a lot of very real things to say.

  "It's gotta be local, Huang says, describing how the group tries to make their message accessible to local audiences by performing primarily in Chinese and Taiwanese. "We're trying to raise up that `I'm proud to be Taiwanese feeling,' he continues. "Once the pride is allowed to rise up then the confidence follows and the truth begins to flow.

  It may just be the "truthful (and Chinese) voice that MC Hotdog and his crew use to deliver their message that is making young Taiwanese audiences crave their music. MC Hotdog's performance earlier this month in Kenting was one of the most memorable of the four-day Spring Scream music festival. By the end of their set, the audience had been turned into a frothing sea of bodies that were begging for more. Most people had never seen, or heard, anything like it in Taiwan.

  "Most kids in Taiwan don't listen to that much rap," says Long, a local member of the group who hails from Tainan. "When they do, they don't understand the lyrics."

  Wooten adds that most hip-hop-style groups in Taiwan to date are all about the "flair" of synchronized dancing and clothes. "We work to offer up something new, something with a little substance."

  The group's message delves into issues that are normally taboo in Taiwanese pop: politics, social injustice, spirituality, philosophy and pop culture. For instance, a song titled "The Invasion" ridicules the flimsy message of MTV love songs: "On TV, all you see are surfaces/ Are you playing dumb?/ Or did you not find out?/ Love here and there; it's too fake; it doesn't move me/ That's why I'm coming out to call you out."

  "We want to represent a true reflection of what we see in Taiwanese society," says Huang. "We want to put our. perspectives on life in Taiwan out on display. Some people may agree with them and some may not, but the important thing is getting it out there and letting people decide for themselves." The other members of the group nod in approval. "It's just about trying to reach people who are closed and opening them up," Huang says.

  And, even within their own group, there are plenty of different perceptions at work. From Wooten, who used to perform at underground clubs with a local NY hip-hop group called Eclectic Regimen, to Long and MC Hotdog, who come from Tainan and Taipei, respectively.

  The one thing that binds them together is a love for hip-hop music and the freedom of expression that it fosters. They also believe that Taiwan has been too sheltered musically and they want to try to open things up a little bit. "If the music that young people listen to and buy is a true reflection of Taiwan society, then this is the lovey-doveyest place on the planet," MC Hotdog says. "But when I look around, that's just not what I see."

  "Good hip-hop tells it like it is," says Wooten. "You have to believe what you write, otherwise it's just straight up fake." Even though he slips easily in-and-out of fluent Chinese, Wooten says that writing and performing lyrics in Chinese is not easy. "I'd love to slip into English because that's my native language," he says. "But we want to reach local kids who are looking for something a little more challenging." For that reason, he says, "we keep it in Chinese, we keep it local."

  Nobody is afraid that the beer, cigarette and party side that the group projects takes away from their message. "I struggle with that sometimes, but, in the end, it comes down to people's ability to choose," Huang says. "When we party, we party like that," he says matter-of-factly. "But I'm also a religious person and a vegetarian and against violence."

  Huang gets quiet and stares down at the Taiwan beer in his hand and thinks for a moment. Then he gets poetic. "These are supposed evils of the world, but am I a bad person, am I a gangster?" he asks. "No. Our songs are about life and life has many sides religion, conflict, fun, violence, love it's all there." Representing all of this, he says, is what hip-hop is about.

  "We want to challenge Taiwanese kids to find what is right for them on their own," he adds. "We are not saying how to be or how to act. We want to fight through the lovey-dovey image of Taiwan music and try to keep things real."

  MC Hotdog performs Friday night at @live, 3F 15 Hoping E. Rd., Sec. 1(和平東路一段15號3樓).
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