In My Dream – MC Jin Live in Malaysia 2012
Images Mike Yip
We’re really big on MC Jin and his roots in freestyle rap battle, so it’s needless to say that we were crazy excited when we heard that he was coming to Malaysia. The Miami born Chinese rapper made waves in the American music scene with his lead single ‘Learn Chinese’ off his debut album, and made bigger waves when he moved to Hong Kong as he shifted his career towards being a Cantonese rapper. We were stoked to see what he has to offer now, especially in terms of stage presence, and after an all out two-hour set, he proved to still be at the top of his game.
He was pretty delighted and even mentioned that he was shocked at the amount of people who actually speak Cantonese in Malaysia. Even more shocking, was the amount of young kids at his concert. Most of whom, memorised the lyrics to his entire set list. At one point he even pulled up two siblings onto the stage to rap with him, with the youngest of the two stealing the limelight with his cute swag.
Halfway through the concert, the audience were treated to a crazy ensemble performance which saw MC Jin teaming up with surprise guests, Dennis Lau and beatboxer extraordinaire, Shawn Lee (the both of them seem to be everywhere these days). The collaborative jam entitled ‘Cooking Up A Storm’ saw the faces of the audience melting, with MC Jin killing it over Lau’s violin and Shawn’s crazy beats.
Despite the major pull he has, MC Jin comes off as a real genuine and humble guy who’s just trying to make it in the world doing what he loves. You can see that he is sincerely touched by the things his fans do for him. Even a badly written paper sign was enough to move him, as he grabbed it from the fan to fully appreciate it onstage.
But it’s things like that, which make you feel it’s worthwhile supporting him as an artist. He’s someone who couldn’t be bothered about haters, but it’s hard to hate him in the first place. He’s someone who appreciates what he has, someone who invites you to be a part of fulfilling his dreams (hell, it’s even in the tour name), instead of someone who demands your attention.
It didn’t matter that half of us from JUICE didn’t understand Cantonese. The honesty in his delivery made the whole thing extremely enjoyable despite not understanding half the jokes he was spitting out in his rhymes.
Would we go again? For sure. The guy’s still a legend. Just let us brush up a little on our Cantonese first. Because it seemed like other people were laughing way more than we were.
Keep up with MC Jin and all the latest mischief he’s up to here.