‘Does this Asian rapper belong here?’

The incident in which San Francisco rapper Chino Yang was forced to apologize to Mayor London Breed — after lambasting the mayor and her perceived inaction on crime — appeared to come to an end last week when Breed’s ally, Rev. Amos Brown, made his own apology to the rapper after criticizing him.

The sordid affair, however, brought to the surface a group often ignored by outsiders: Asian American rappers.

“When people see a rap song, they’re going to be like, ‘Does this Asian rapper belong here?’” said Kyle Shin, a San Francisco Chinese- and Korean-American rapper, who believed Yang was singled partly because of the song’s focus on San Francisco politics, but also partly because Asian rappers are still not taken seriously.

“Asian Americans are still not really viewed as hip-hop artists,” he said. “I think there’s a disconnect.”

That disconnect, he said, comes from Asians being seen as the model minority — hard workers and apolitical. “People are looking at this video, they’re already critiquing it on the level, like, this guy doesn’t deserve to have a story,” he said — because viewers are so unaccustomed to hearing that story coming from an Asian artist. 

Jason Chu, an Asian rapper in Los Angeles, echoed that sentiment. “There’s this indignation of, ‘How does somebody that we perceive to not belong dare to open their mouths, to speak into our communities?’” said Chu. He cited the work of University of California, Irvine, professor Claire Jean Kim,  which argues that Asian-Americans’ bodies, communities, voices and experiences are considered as “unassimilably foreign,” said Chu.

In Chu’s experience, Asian American rappers become a reality that’s “puzzling and confusing and sometimes interesting to America.”

A growing community

To young Asian rappers, however, it is a natural byproduct of an evolving, growing and diverse Asian community. U.S.-born Asians, who comprise 43 percent of the country’s Asian population, are significantly younger — a median of 19 years old, compared to 36 for all U.S.-born people, according to Pew. 

Rap has gradually become an integral part of many Asian-American communities. “Wherever you find our communities, there’s folks there,” said Chu. “I know that myself and many of the other Asian American rappers I know were drawn to hip-hop as an artistic culture because of the way that it gives marginal voices room to draw from their experiences.”

Yang is not the only rapper to have written about his home. “We have a lot of regional pride. A lot of us care a lot about the streets we grew up on, and telling our story authentically,” said Shin, who released the album “From a Rooftop in Chinatown” as a love letter to the place he grew up.

“The themes and topics of Asian-American hip-hop are as diverse as the Asian-American community is, which is to say, immensely,” Chu added. 

Shin, in his songs, explores his experience as a multi-ethnic Chinese and Korean man growing up in the Bay Area. Audrey Nuna, in New Jersey, makes music from a Korean-American woman’s perspective. Hometown pride is a main fixture in G Yamazawa’s work. P-Lo, a leading Filipino rapper in the Bay Area, collaborates with the Golden State Warriors. 

For Shin, Yang’s message in his song “San Francisco Our Home” represents a trend that falls into the “speaking up against injustice” tradition of hip-hop. 

“Especially since the pandemic, most Asian American rappers I know have commented on anti-Asian violence,” he said. That includes viral rap songs which included clips of anti-Asian violence, and another about Asian airline passenger David Dao, who was forcibly dragged from his seat on an overbooked United Airlines flight in 2017. Shin, known to his fans as “Son of Paper,” also explored anti-Asian violence in his 2022 song “Mr. Chinatown.” In 2021, Chu put out an entire album, “Face Value,” as a response to anti-Asian hate. 

Shin said he has not experienced “overt racism” as an Asian rapper, thanks to rappers that came out in the 2000s, such as MC Jin and Dumbfounded, who paved the way. The industry has “now seen examples of [Asian] artists that can be commercially viable,” he said.

‘You’re Asian; why are you rapping?’

Filipino rapper Raimol “Rymo” Cortado, also known as Rymeezee, said he “got tested for being Asian” — being told, “let me hear you rap,” or “this is not for you” by producers. But he feels this is the “dues” he needs to pay. “Yeah, you had to show and prove,” he said. “The problem is this, the Asian community loves to appropriate people from the streets, but [Asian community] never want to understand or be a part of it.”

While some Asian rappers choose to stick with their own group, “a lot of the Filipinos, they blend in, they’re not just with Filipinos … We’re with everyone … we integrate,” said Cortado, who grew up in the Tenderloin and the Excelsior, among African Americans, Latinos and people of color. The 42-year-old man who always dresses “classy but street” writes about the 52 Excelsior Muni line, the grab-and-go crisis in the city and, as a father of four, his family. 

“For many years, people thought that I was not Filipino on songs … I’ve never really found it offensive. I felt these streets of San Francisco make you sound different. You dress differently, you talk differently. It’s a different kind of swag. I took that everywhere with me,” he said. 

Unavoidably, the stereotype is sometimes internalized by the Asian community. “I feel I got more hate from other Asians for being a rapper than from people who are not Asian,” said Jason Wu, 28, a San Francisco rapper of Chinese descent who is also known as “Dragon of the West.”

Wu encountered ridicule from other Asian kids at school when he chose to rap at age 14. “I guess they just didn’t understand it, or they saw it as a joke, like, ‘You’re Asian, why are you rapping?’” he said. His works touch on both the Chinese community he grew up around and Japanese anime. Wu’s parents, who believed that becoming a doctor or a lawyer was the best path forward, also disapproved of his art. 

Wu, however, found solace elsewhere. “The funny thing is, my friends from other races, they really supported it, especially my Black friends. They really liked that I took an interest in the art form. And they can see that I had a true appreciation for it,” he said. 

Mandeep Sethi, known as “SETI X,” who now lives in San Francisco, also sees hip-hop culture as “inviting and very inclusive.”

After 9/11, “American culture looks at me as a terrorist,” said the 35-year-old Sikh rapper, who was once the only kid with “a turban and a beard” among his school’s 4,000 kids. But “hip-hop culture is not based on your looks,” he said of its appeal. “Hip-hop culture is based on your skills.”

Sethi grew up in the Korean and Chinese rapper community in Los Angeles and writes about social injustice, oppression and police brutality. “I focus more on unity, so I focus more on building intergenerational and intercultural bridges,” he said. 

Sethi estimates there are at least 100 active Asian rappers in the Bay Area.

To Shin’s point of view, the crown is up for the taking. “But the question is, who really will build a legacy here?” said Shin. “I hope the Bay Area grows Asian American artists who are really able to make a mark and make a scene here, but only time will tell.”

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