Raymond Yu与欧阳靖(MC Jin)的冲突

偷渡垃圾滚边去

THE RETURN OF CHINA MAC: NEW YORK’S MOST HARDENED MCA former Chinatown gangster is one of the most exciting voices to come out of New York City.

Shortly after throwing a handgun into a dumpster, an Asian male in a black hoodie runs into a barren loading dock, only to be met by a police officer who is casually waiting by his car. The cop throws his drink to the ground and immediately pulls out a gun of his own and tells the suspect to put his hands up and lie on the concrete.

“You ain’t got to get all crazy, bro!” the suspect says as the cop cuffs him. The action looks like one of those heinous police surveillance videos that clutter our news feeds these days, but it’s actually not. With a gun pressed to his head, the suspect lifts his face from the concrete, revealing a missing tooth in his grill. The beat to 50 Cent’s grimy mixtape cut “U Not Like Me” drops and he begins to spit:

If you don’t know who I am by now then it’s about that time you ask somebody ’bout me
Cause when the drama go down, I’m the one they know, that be letting it go
Put it down in these streets.
Nah nah, you not like me…

The man “arrested” in that music video is Raymond Yu, better known as China Mac. The Brooklyn-born Chinese-American rapper has over 10,000 subscribers to his China Mac Music YouTube page, and has recorded collabs with such respected NYC rappers as Dave East, Young M.A., Cory Guns and Jadakiss. But for all Mac’s accomplishmentson the mic, he’s arguably better known for his exploits on the streets as a former member of the Ghost Shadows Gang.

As we walked by tourists and shoppers shuffling by the Chinese supermarkets that lined Bayard Street, Mac explained how the street scene unfolding in front of us was starkly different to the one he remembered in the 1980s and ’90s. By the formerly dollar-sign-wallpapered, late night Chinatown eatery, 69 Bayard, Mac stopped to point out two old apartment buildings directly across from one another.

“We had two security cameras and the monitors were upstairs so we could watch what was going on,” Mac said. “We used to always stand by the store and watch the street. Paying attention to see if any gangsters would come through and press them, burn their hair off.” Mac further elaborated that Chinese gangsters back then would dye their hair to rep their gang. So if a rival color was spotted, someone’s highlights were getting lit up.

Mac says 69 Bayard was a fixture of his old stomping grounds. “I saw my first dead body as a kid laying right there in front of that restaurant,” he told MASS APPEAL in an email interview conducted last year, while he was behind bars. “So that location had a lot more personal meaning to me than just a cool looking location.”

China Mac family photo via NextShark

Mac first got down with the Ghost Shadows as a preteen. His father had been a member of a rival gang, the Flying Dragons. “Me and my father weren’t on good terms, so I did that to rebel,” he says. The Ghost Shadows once controlled blocks of Chinatown until taking a major blow in 1996 when four of the gang’s top leaders became government witnesses including the boss, Wing Yeung Chan.

“Other gangs in New York got enough of its members doing crime that it can take a big bust and fully operate,” Mac said. “In the Asian community, once they took out everyone, people just stopped.”

Mac showed me restaurants on Mott St. that he said were once extorted by the Shadows, where his gang used to be able to place $150 orders for free. He added that the cooks were likely spitting in their food before handing it to them. Mac then came to Pell Street right by 15 Pell, the headquarters of the Hip Sing Tong and its leader Uncle Seven, the late godfather of Chinatown. A notoriously tiny street in Chinatown, Mac remembers how wild it was back then.

“Nobody wanted to come on this block because it was so narrow and small,” he said looking down Pell. “You could get trapped off. One shout and 1000 motherfuckas would be out here.”

Now 36 years old, Mac has been in and out of the criminal justice system his whole life. He first began rapping while serving time in juvenile detention centers. This past May, he walked out of Sing Sing prison after he served 16 months for a parole violation in January of 2016. Prior to that, he was out on parole, released in 2013 after doing a 10-year bid in Sing Sing for a shooting involving MC Jin of Ruff Ryders that occurred on the morning of November 9, 2003 at the Yello Bar nightclub on Mulberry Street.

At the time, Jin was carrying the torch for Asian-Americans in hip hop. In 2001 he dominated the popular Freestyle Fridays competition on BET’s 106 & Park. After winning seven battles in a row, he became the first Asian-American to be inducted into the show’s Hall of Fame. On the strength of Jin’s success on BET, Ruff Ryders came knocking and made Jin the first Asian-American rapper to be signed to a major label. Of course, Jin followed in the footsteps of trailblazers like the late Christopher Wong Won (Fresh Kid Ice) of Miami’s 2 Live Crew. In New York, Jin had contemporaries, such as China Mac who went by the name G-Kay at the time, and had just come home after a three-year bid for gang-related offenses when they met up that fateful night in the club.

“I’ve never met Jin before that,” Mac told DJ Vlad back in 2014. “Me and Jin ain’t ever have no interaction before that day. But Jin was hanging out with, I wouldn’t say they were rival gang members but they were part of another set. It wasn’t like it was war but it was always like, uneasy.” As Mac’s account goes, a friend of his had a beef to settle with Jin, who had allegedly disrespected one of his boys in prison—something to do with a female. “I would have told him to handle it,” Mac explained. “But because my mind was already gone, I was like aight, whatever, wassup.” After a couple of drinks, the altercation escalated to where a member of Jin’s camp pulled out a knife, Mac pulled out a .40 caliber pistol and aimed it at the head of Jin’s associate Christopher Louie. With his mind gone, Mac squeezed the trigger and the gun jammed. Mac pulled the trigger again and this time the gun went off, with the bullet hitting Louie in the back. That’s when Mac ran out the club and went on the lam. He was arrested a year later trying to cross the border into Canada.

Photo by [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5)]Monica Rubalcava

Between his uncompromising music and his colorful history, Mac is widely respected as a hardcore New York rapper who spits “real hip hop.” NYC has always had a special fondness for rap that’s tough as a steel-toed boot and lyrically slices through your ears like a box cutter. Walking through Chinatown with Mac it’s not unusual for fans—some of whom were locked up with him at one point or another—to suddenly interrupting your conversation. It’s clear that Mac has struck a chord in the streets of New York.

But in a hip hop game dominated by SoundCloud stars and Auto-Tuned “mumble rappers” it seems that hardcore New York MCs are no longer placed on the highest pedestals anymore. They instead appeal to a niche of traditionalists and those that can truly relate to the music’s gritty realism. However, China Mac has learned a lot behind bars and he said he’s ready to adapt without sacrificing what makes him one of New York’s rawest talents today.

“MOVIE IN THE MAKING is going to be what the fan knows,” says Mac of his second mixtape, the follow up to Free China Mac. “When I came home I knew that I was still going to make that hardcore music that I grew up with,” he says. “But I was like, ‘Damn, I got to kind of conform because I got to make music that is going to get me to places where I want to go.’” The first single, “Johnny Dang,” gives some idea of the direction.

Mac points out that there was a time the older generation thought the hardcore raps that deeply influenced his sound, from artists like Wu-Tang and Mobb Deep, were considered “trash” by the older generation. Unlike some “true school” diehards, Mac believes that hip hop isn’t dead but rather that it’s constantly evolving. Through all his life experiences, Mac has maintained a hustler mentality which he now applies to the business of music.

“If I could just rap the straight, hardcore New York shit and be paid for it handsomely, I would just do that. I’m not going to sell out myself and be somebody I’m not, but I am going to try and get a bigger audience,” he said seated on a stoop in Mott Street near one of his old hangouts, the Chinatown Fair arcade. “For me, doing this hardcore shit all the time, I’m going to be held in this little net. If we trying to get fish we need to eat, and if we only got this little-ass net, we only going to catch one little fish.”

Mac then pulled out his phone to play me a new song he recorded with $tupid Young. Young is a Cambodian-American rapper who’s experienced that street and prison life as a member of the Asian Boyz, a gang based in Long Beach, California.  Their sounds are completely different though, with Young embracing Auto-Tune like many of today’s newer rappers. The song still sounds like a Mac track, with the same sort of hard bars he’s delivered on his previous songs.

“I’m a New York rapper but I don’t want to be put in a box,” he says. “I do whatever the fuck I want and make whatever music I want.”

In between November of 2013— when Mac first got out of prison and relaunched his career—and January of 2016— When Mac got locked up again—Mac has made a name for himself. On the strength of his reputation and street respect, he’s lined up some major features for the new project, which is hosted by the “Mad Rapper.” The challenge now is to find open-minded listeners. “A lot of people won’t give you the time of the day unless you are popping,” he explains. “It’s definitely frustrating to be overlooked when you know what your worth is. But, I don’t let it get to me because I know that with hard work and quality product, that will change. Also, being able to deliver a quality product with a minimum budget is a big struggle. So far I’ve been doing pretty well, but it ain’t easy.”

All those years Mac was locked did not go to waste. He stresses the point that he used his time behind bars wisely, reading books about the music business and figuring out how to start his own label Red Money Records. Within months after his release, he registered Red Money Records as an LLC. Something he is especially proud about stressing that it’s easy to come up with an idea when you’re locked up 24 hours a day but harder to execute in the real world.

“Once these inmates come out and life hits them again, they just fall into line,” he says. “I didn’t allow myself to do that. The same momentum that I had in prison drives me now. And I don’t let it go.”

The rawness of Mac’s music shows he hasn’t let go of the experiences he faced as one of approximately 77,000 inmates  currently locked up in the New York State Correctional System. On songs like “The Yard,” Mac serves as a voice for those incarcerated in New York State’s brutal correctional system, speaking about the physical abuse that he experienced behind bars. Mac’s missing tooth is reminder of the time he was hogtied and beaten by guards on Rikers Island. One of his most fiery songs is “Buck a Cop,” a song about taking an eye-for-an-eye approach with abusive police. “Running into the precinct squeezing about 100 shots,” he raps. The song is really a radical protest anthem, but it definitely didn’t do Mac any favors when he was arrested last year.

Despite how hardcore he comes off, Mac told me he sees himself as a humanitarian. He has uploaded videos of himself interviewing community members at anti–police brutality events and volunteering to feed the homeless on Thanksgiving.

“At the end of the day we take a lot from our community. I took a lot from mine,” Mac said as the Mott Street foot traffic bustles past. “And when you are in the street doing bullshit you are taking from your community. People make their mistakes but you got to give back and be balanced.”

Speaking of mistakes, Mac acknowledges that he has made his fair share, but he strongly believes that everything happens for a reason. “People spend too much time thinking about shit that they can’t control versus focusing on the things that they can control,” he says.

I’m not surprised when he tells me that he views his ethnicity as an advantage while other Asian-American rappers, such as those interviewed in the 2016 documentary Bad Rap, have expressed a belief that being Asian has made it more difficult to succeed in the rap game.

Mac embodies that hardened New York mentality at its finest, where there ain’t no time to cry, only time to grind.

“I always thought it was easier [being Asian],” he states.“I say that because I don’t have a problem fitting in with others. I’m spitting just like Raheem from the block but I’m Asian. It gives me more flare and it’s an eye-opening opportunity,” he adds.

“I’m Asian, I’m Chinese but at the end of the day I know what this music shit is… My whole thing is that I don’t like to pander to the Asians. I don’t complain. I spent summers in the box eating fucking slop. I make do with what I got.”