Rap song stirs outrage, protests

Recording artist YG song encourages robbing Chinese homes; Chinese rappers respond in verse, 'diss' exchange goes viral

"First, you find a house and scope it out. Find a Chinese neighborhood, because they don't believe in bank accounts."

The lyrics from Black rapper YG's song Meet the Flockers, a step-by-step guide on how to perform a burglary, has outraged the Chinese-American community and netizens on the other side of the globe.

Chinese rappers have hit back at YG with "diss tracks", including a Chinese-language hip hop song by the Whale Island Band, and an English track by Ph Dragon, a PhD student at the University of Southern California.

"Yo YG, now the Chinese neighborhood find you, and you gonna taste your own stuff (clean version). What goes around comes around, checking out Youtube look here what I found."

The song on Youtube has received more than 130,000 views and 6,000 likes. As of Oct 7, Ph Dragon had crowdfunded more than $3,000 to shoot a music video for the "diss track".

"After hearing YG's song on robbing Chinese, as a Chinese rapper, I felt I needed to get our voice heard, but I never expected the song to get so popular," wrote Ph Dragon on China's equivalent of Quora, Zhihu.

"I didn't write the song to attack blacks," he said. "I just want people to know we Chinese are not doormats."

Others are fighting the lyrics with political influence.

More than 60,000 people have signed a petition to the White House, asking for a ban on the song.

John Chan of Brooklyn Asian Communities Empowerment confirmed during a Monday press conference that they were organizing a protest in Philadelphia on Oct 15, the same day YG is giving a concert in the city.

"We have to get our voice heard," said Chan, who was also the main organizer of the rallies for Chinese-American police officer Peter Liang earlier year.

Community leaders at the conference also call for a bigger turnout rate for the upcoming presidential election.

"The more votes we get, the louder our voice will be," said Chung Dick, vice-chairman of the American Chinese Commerce Association. "Each vote counts."

The controversy has even caused uproar in China. Recently, Netizens have been sharing YG's song along with footage of a Chinese woman fending off three burglars in her home in Atlanta.

"The overseas Chinese should learn from her, and use guns to protect themselves," said a user on Weibo.

YG and his record label Def Jam have not openly responded to the protests.

hezijiang@chinadailyusa.com