You better not be too exhausted after your raunchy Chinese Valentine's romp as this weekend gets off to a banging start with the arrival of some old school rap legends in Taipei. Tonight at Luxy the rap group Naughty By Nature will be spitting rhymes and dropping beats. The famous trio from New Jersey comprises MC Treach, MC Vinnie, and DJ Kay Gee.
The New Jersey rap group was spotted by Queen Latifah, and was signed up with Tommy Boy, after which they dropped the hit single OPP ("Other People's Property"). This immediately made them rap superstars and unlike a lot of other groups they were able to stay street and achieve pop status, continuing to release hits like Hip Hop Hooray and Hey! Ho!. Problems arose in the group and DJ Kay Gee decided to leave and concentrate on his production career. Fortunately, even with this loss, Naughty By Nature still had the skills to create hot tracks.
The Vinyl Word has got some good news and bad news this week on the rap front. First, old school legends Public Enemy won't be turning up this week so don't believe the hype. They were supposed to turn up this Wednesday at MoS, but the gig has been postponed. Now the good news: On Aug. 26, someone who isn't old school will be rocking MoS, namely N.O.R.E..
PHOTO COURTESY OF LUXY
Tonight MoS will be featuring DJ Backside -- so-called because she has a nice ass. She is also known for her ability to keep the club hyped and being the first lady on DJ Rolo1-3's (founder of the legendary Pirate DJ) new crew, Core DJ Family. DJ Backside also runs the radio show The Hot Spot on 106 KMEL in the US. Guest starring tonight will be US DMC Champion DJ Imperial.
Saturday night at Luxy will be Hybrid, a night of progressive beats and house by DJ Reason and DJ Kaoru. DJ Reason has released such vinyl works as The Toolz Press and DJ Kaoru won the first IRON DJ series.
This Saturday will also feature the return of G-Club to MoS. G-Club is made up of Gerald Elms, Dan Tait, and Shovell. Gerald Elms is the producer/DJ of the group, and known for being involved with Roger Sanchez and DJ Disciple, plus helping remix the likes of Mary J. Blige and Sophie Ellis-Bextor. Dan Tait is the technically skilled DJ in G-Club and Shovell, a percussionist, has worked with the likes of M-People, Chemical Brothers, and Primal Scream. Unfortunately he's an Arsenal fan.
For all you people out there who were disappointed by the typhoon ruining Aquaboogie 3 last week, there's supposed to be a party at Daxi Beach this weekend. But don't bank on it because it looks like another case of rain stopping play.
It’s a good thing that 2025 is over. Yes, I fully expect we will look back on the year with nostalgia, once we have experienced this year and 2027. Traditionally at New Years much discourse is devoted to discussing what happened the previous year. Let’s have a look at what didn’t happen. Many bad things did not happen. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) did not attack Taiwan. We didn’t have a massive, destructive earthquake or drought. We didn’t have a major human pandemic. No widespread unemployment or other destructive social events. Nothing serious was done about Taiwan’s swelling birth rate catastrophe.
Words of the Year are not just interesting, they are telling. They are language and attitude barometers that measure what a country sees as important. The trending vocabulary around AI last year reveals a stark divergence in what each society notices and responds to the technological shift. For the Anglosphere it’s fatigue. For China it’s ambition. For Taiwan, it’s pragmatic vigilance. In Taiwan’s annual “representative character” vote, “recall” (罷) took the top spot with over 15,000 votes, followed closely by “scam” (詐). While “recall” speaks to the island’s partisan deadlock — a year defined by legislative recall campaigns and a public exhausted
In the 2010s, the Communist Party of China (CCP) began cracking down on Christian churches. Media reports said at the time that various versions of Protestant Christianity were likely the fastest growing religions in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The crackdown was part of a campaign that in turn was part of a larger movement to bring religion under party control. For the Protestant churches, “the government’s aim has been to force all churches into the state-controlled organization,” according to a 2023 article in Christianity Today. That piece was centered on Wang Yi (王怡), the fiery, charismatic pastor of the
Hsu Pu-liao (許不了) never lived to see the premiere of his most successful film, The Clown and the Swan (小丑與天鵝, 1985). The movie, which starred Hsu, the “Taiwanese Charlie Chaplin,” outgrossed Jackie Chan’s Heart of Dragon (龍的心), earning NT$9.2 million at the local box office. Forty years after its premiere, the film has become the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute’s (TFAI) 100th restoration. “It is the only one of Hsu’s films whose original negative survived,” says director Kevin Chu (朱延平), one of Taiwan’s most commercially successful
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