In its ninth year, Notorious MSG is a rap group “with a hip hop brain and punk rock heart.” Members Hong Kong Fever, Down-Lo Mein and most recent addition Hunan Bomb met in Chinatown in Manhattan and formed the trio to rap about women, the gangster lifestyle and Chinese cuisine and restaurant culture. Formerly featured in BUST’s Men We Love issue, the Original Chinatown bad boys are dropping their new album, “Heavy Ghetto,” on May 24.
If you’ve never heard of Notorious MSG, watch this video and see the trio in the atmosphere in which they supposedly met one another: the restaurant of a Chinese restaurant they all worked in. If you want to listen to the boys rhyme about romance, listen to the smooth “Dim Sum Girl,” a wistful song composed of spoken word laye[video:http://whiteboardjournal.com/features/w_music/w_music-series-vol-03-notorious-msg.html 425×344]red over soft, melodic piano and percussion that sounds like keyboard beats. If you’d prefer to sample a tough, gangster anthem listen to the rowdy “Straight out of Canton,” the matching Adidas tracksuits in the video complete the badass image. Among my favorite jams is their spirited tribute to egg rolls, and the catchy chorus in “Chinatown Hustler.”
W_Music Series Vol.03: The Notorious MSG from Whiteboard Journal on Vimeo.
