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fifteen | The Low Mays and the

Transgression of Wo Lei Fei Fei
MichAel kA- chi cheuk

At the 2015 Oscars, rapper Common and singer John Legend accepted
the award for best original song for “Glory” from the film Selma (2014),
which dramatizes the 1965 voting rights marches. In their acceptance
speech, Common alluded to the bridge that the civil rights and free-
dom march, led by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr., passed over:

This bridge was once a landmark of a divided nation, but now is a

symbol for change. The spirit of this bridge transcends race, gender,
religion, sexual orientation and social status. The spirit of this bridge
connects the kid from the South Side of Chicago dreaming of a better
life, to those in France standing up for their freedom of expression,
to the people in Hong Kong protesting for Democracy. This bridge
was built on hope, welded with compassion and elevated by love for
all human beings. (Kay, 2015)

Common’s small tribute toward the 2014 Umbrella Movement was warmly
embraced by supporters of the protest, and the legendary rapper’s name
went viral on Hong Kong social media (Wertime, 2015). Many cultures
and nations, including Hong Kong, have a history of utilizing rap and
Hip-Hop as forms of resistance for marginalized movements and groups
(Bonnette 2015). Curiously, Common’s nod was one of the only Hip-
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Hop interventions into the Umbrella Movement era of pro-democracy

protests, domestically and internationally. In this chapter, I examine
the omission of rap music in the Umbrella Movement through its self-
restraining principle of wo lei fei fei (peacefulness, rationality, nonvio-
lence, and no foul language). Next I consider the Hong Kong Hip-Hop
group the Low Mays as a case study of how their parody rap transgresses
the self-restraint phenomenon of the Umbrella Movement.

The Umbrella Movement

The Umbrella Movement was one of the largest civil disobedience
campaign in the history of Hong Kong. It was also, at the time, the
largest protest campaign on Chinese soil involving the occupation of
public space since the 1989 student movement in Beijing (Lee and
Chan, 2018). The Umbrella Movement, broadly defined, refers to the
unexpected spinoff from an earlier protest campaign entitled “Occupy
Central.” The objective was to protest against the Chinese Communist
Party’s (CCP) intervention in the establishment of universal suffrage in
Hong Kong. Days before Occupy Central was to be officially launched,
a total of eight-seven cans of teargas were fired at peaceful demonstra-
tors. Umbrellas in the hands of protesters were raised altogether on the
spot to defend against the riot police’s suppression. Very soon protest-
ers dispersed and occupied other busy areas of Hong Kong, including
Central, Admiralty, Mong Kok, Causeway Bay, and Tsim Sha Tsui. The
name “Umbrella Movement” was then coined to refer to the occupa-
tion, which lasted for seventy-nine days. During the movement, Hong
Kong people were roughly divided into two camps: the “yellow ribbons”
(supporters of the Umbrella Movement) and the “blue ribbons” (sup-
porters of the police and the government). The antagonism was so
strong that many people from both camps resorted to deleting people
who held different ideological and moral beliefs from their Facebook
accounts (Lee and Chan, 2018).
Conflicts, however, also existed among the supporters of the
Umbrella Movement. Of particular contention was whether one should
follow the insistence on peacefulness, rationality, nonviolence, and no
foul language (wo lei fei fei) as an overarching framework for all forms
of protests. The history of wo lei fei fei can be traced back to the 1989
Tiananmen Square Massacre, when a prominent activist in Hong Kong
described the Beijing student protesters as adhering to wo lei fei (peace-
fulness, rationality, nonviolence) despite the brutality of the People’s

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Liberation Army (Wong, 2013). The principle was then extended to the
rejection of indecent or discriminatory language, and served as a fun-
damental tenet of pro-democratic protests in Hong Kong. It has been
argued that the importance and influence of wo lei fei fei lie in its strict
adherence to righteous moral values: “If a sociopolitical movement
for a just cause involves injustice (e.g., discrimination and violence),
the movement will be contradicting itself” (Szeto, 2014, translation my
own). In fact, the full name of Occupy Central was “Occupy Central with
Love and Peace.” Such an emphasis on nonviolence was largely inspired
by the acts of civil disobedience of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther
King Jr. in their respective political struggles (Lee and Chan, 2018).
According to Benny Tai, one of the initiators of Occupy Central, break-
ing the law does not equate to breaching the rule of law (Lee and Chan,
2018). Accordingly, the idea was promoted that all participants of the
occupation would peacefully, rationally, and nonviolently turn them-
selves into the police and face all judicial penalties by the end of the
occupation, which is consistent with the principles of nonviolent direct
action (Lee and Chan, 2018).
As the tension between Hong Kong and China intensified to new
heights in the 2010s, there was growing discontent with adhering to the
indisputable status of wo lei fei fei. Sociologist Lui Tai-lok (2017) observes
that the lack of substantial progress in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy
movement has led to a type of “laziness” (do sing) among its leaders.
Rather than proactively seeking systemic changes of democracy within
an undemocratic establishment, pro-democratic leaders seem to be con-
cerned only about playing the role of the “oppositional party” within the
institution. In order to maintain their status as the “voice of the people,”
pro-democratic factions have focused their efforts on adhering to righ-
teous and moral discourses that can appeal to their peaceful supporters
and voters, rather than fighting for democratic change. As early as 2011,
Wan Chin, a former university professor and the “father of Hong Kong
city-statism,” harshly condemned wo lei fei fei as a form of “brainwash-
ing” and an invisible “shackle” that was holding back a real uprising
in Hong Kong. For Wan Chin, violence is never the binary opposite of
rational thinking. He cites as a case in point the 1911 Xinhai Revolution,
which led to the collapse of three thousand years of imperial rule in
China. In face of a powerful tyranny, violence becomes a rational resolu-
tion for protesters (Wan Chin, 2011).
For these reasons, Wan Chin is a vocal proponent of “valiant resis-
tance” (yung mou kong jang), which is comparable to Malcolm X’s

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principle of “by any means necessary.” In contrast, the vision of Occupy

Central, which served as the main driver of the Umbrella Movement,
has been described as a form of “radicalization with self-restraint.” An
important example of wo lei fei fei is the protest at the Chinese National
Day Flag Raising ceremony at Golden Bauhinia Square on October 1,
2014, when the Umbrella Movement was at its earliest stage. Initially, a
group of radical protesters sought to disrupt and potentially shut down
the ceremony, as a gesture of discontent directed at the Chinese govern-
ment. It was said that the student leader Joshua Wong and other student
demonstrators did not want to “disrespect the Chinese government” or
“disrespect the ceremony,” for fear that it would give the Chinese gov-
ernment an excuse to send in the People’s Liberation Army to violently
suppress the Umbrella Movement. Instead, the student demonstrators
formed a human chain and crossed their arms to express their dissat-
isfaction with the government, which simultaneously “protected” the
ceremony from the radical protesters (Hong Kong Resurgence, 2014).
Martin Luther King Jr., who was constantly referenced by the Occupy
Central initiators, famously said, “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run
then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep
moving forward” (1956, p. 433). As the Umbrella Movement unfolded, a
growing number of protesters felt that wo lei fei fei had become a self-
restraint whereby those who sought to fly or run were condemned for
hurting the public image of the movement and threatening the moral
high ground of the democratic protest. Such self-restraint was evident
not only in the means of social protest, but also in the musical expres-
sion of the Umbrella Movement. Rap music was largely absent throughout
the Umbrella Movement, although there is a deep-rooted assumption in
Hong Kong that rap music is intricately tied with social justice and protest.

Hong Kong Hip-Hop

The first Hip-Hop and rap fever in Hong Kong was initiated by the nu-
metal/rap group LMF (LazyMuthaFucka) in the early 2000s.1 LMF’s
brand of sociopolitical observations of working-class life, with its mix of
rap-metal, rock, and Hip-Hop musical sensibilities, became a cultural
phenomenon among Hong Kong youths in the early 2000s. Songs like
“WTF” (2003) and “Middle Finger in the Air” (2009) channel the aes-
thetics of American political rap/rock groups like Rage Against the
Machine and Public Enemy to vent anger and frustration toward the
Hong Kong government with curse-ridden lyrics. Meanwhile, its heavy

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use of curse words and vulgarity in select songs has provoked immense
social backlash for leading Hong Kong youths astray. As observed by
one critic, LMF “must be connected with vulgarity and deviance” in the
eyes of the mainstream (Chan, 2002). This may no longer be the case
in present-day Hong Kong, but during the early 2000s, LMF was at the
center of a moral panic that was eerily similar to mainstream America’s
response to gangsta rap. For Tricia Rose, gangsta rap played a major role
in “the near-depletion of what was once a vibrant, diverse, and complex
popular genre, wringing it dry by pandering to America’s racist and sex-
ist lowest common denominator” (2008, p. 2).
Ever since the emergence of LMF, Hong Kong society has associated
rap music with politics, particularly envisioning rap as synonymous with
social protest. Such an assumption was revisited when an online debate
ensued after a popular blogger in Hong Kong claimed that “Hip-Hop is
the disharmonic and protest voice of the post-war generation” and LMF
is Hong Kong’s only “real” Hip-Hop artists (Loud, 2013). Hong Kong
rapper MastaMic responded in the same blog post by stating that Hip-
Hop is a highly diverse and fluid musical genre, and can never be catego-
rized by singular traits like “social protest” (Loud, 2013). Although Hong
Kong rappers are well aware that rap with political messages is only one
of many subgenres of Hip-Hop, they have consistently included politi-
cal rap songs in their body of work. One of MastaMic’s mixtapes is aptly
titled Justice Is What I Rap For (2012), which features songs like “Fight to
Vote,” and “Wealth Envy.” Some of his latest songs, like “Jungle” (2018),
portray the symbolic violence and “survival of the fittest” of Hong Kong
society through the lens of a wild jungle. In the past decade, he has
also released an annual music series, Rap Up, which summarizes Hong
Kong’s key news and developments of the year. The Umbrella Movement
was one of many events that was covered in “Rap Up 2015.” The Hip-Hop
collective Bakerie are touted as the next big thing in Hong Kong Hip-
Hop, thanks to a string of trap-influenced singles like “Spending HKD,
Raking in RMB” (2014) and “Li Ka Shing” (2017) that critique Hong
Kong’s culture of greed and materialism. One of the more successful
attempts to challenge Hong Kong listeners’ conflation of rap and politi-
cal rap is the rap duo FAMA, which specializes in Cantopop-influenced
and relatively apolitical rap songs that appeal to the Hong Kong main-
stream audience. Although FAMA has accumulated fifty awards through-
out its career, many in competition against A-list pop stars in Hong Kong
(“Artist Profile: FAMA,” 2018), it has yet to dethrone LMF’s position as
the representative of “authentic” Hong Kong Hip-Hop.

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Despite disbanding in 2003 and reuniting largely as a gigging band

in 2009, LMF remains Hong Kong’s most respected and discussed rap
artist. LMF’s long shadow has resulted in a dual challenge of Hip-Hop
authenticity for subsequent Hong Kong Hip-Hop acts. On the one hand,
Hong Kong rappers are expected to stay true to the “authentic” African
American traditions of Hip-Hop; on the other hand, they need to “keep
it real” with their local subjectivity, culture, and ideals. The authenticity
to which Hong Kong society perceives Hip-Hop owes allegiance means,
curiously, protest and social justice. Hong Kong society’s assumption
that rap equals social protest is due to the arguably untouchable leg-
acy of LMF’s angry, subversive, and violent rap songs. Lakeyta Monique
Bonnette observes that “all rap is political just by virtue of rebelling from
society’s views of conformity, but this would be overly simplistic” (2015,
p. 142). Instead, Bonnette proposes to examine rap’s direct involvement
with politics through the subgenre of “political rap.” For Bonnette, polit-
ical rap “is any rap song that makes a political reference and also com-
ments on social issues or provides some form of solution to social and
political injustices described in the song” (2015, p. 148). LMF’s political
rap, in Bonnette’s terms, has had a lasting impact on Hong Kong listen-
ers’ political attitudes.

Music and the Umbrella Movement

Music served as a major protest tactic in the Umbrella Movement.
According to Tim Rühlig (2016), protest songs during the Umbrella
Movement contained four characteristics: first, the protest songs served
as a source of mobilization, especially through a celebration of local cul-
tural identity; second, the protest songs were cultivated by Hong Kong
youths; third, the protest songs contained humor, hidden references,
and sarcasm; and finally, the protest songs displayed a commitment to a
nonviolent protest culture. It would appear that Hong Kong rap music
fits perfectly with all of the above features except an inclination toward
peaceful protest. However, among the four protest songs that Rühlig
found representative of the Umbrella Movement period, none of them
were rap songs or featured elements of rap music. “Raise the Umbrella”
(2014), an original composition and the de facto theme song of the
Umbrella Movement, featured an array of established Cantopop singers
like Denise Ho and Anthony Wong and independent musicians like yuki-
lovey and GDJYB. While one could argue that the omission of rap music

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from “Raise the Umbrella” is a stylistic choice, it seems odd that the writ-
ers of the song did not take advantage of Hong Kong rap’s attentiveness
to social justice mobilization, celebration of local cultural identity, and
association with the youth generation.
I argue that the absence of rap music in the Umbrella Movement
is partly due to Hong Kong mainstream audience’s expectations of rap
as an angry, violent, and curse-laden cultural form. Since the Umbrella
Movement had been guided by the principle of wo lei fei fei, the main-
stream faction of the Umbrella Movement consciously or subconsciously
marginalized the participation of Hong Kong Hip-Hop, so as to avoid
any tampering with the peace-loving image of the pro-democracy move-
ment. Returning to the protest songs of the Umbrella Movement, we
can see that the majority of them focused on encouraging demonstra-
tors and expressing solidarity in face of Chinese and Hong Kong state
repression. There is a glaring absence of songs that directly challenge
the “enemy” of the Umbrella Movement: the CCP or even the Hong
Kong government.
It is also worth questioning whether Hong Kong rappers them-
selves were prone to such self-restraint or even self-censorship during
the Umbrella Movement. In a 2013 interview, roughly a year before the
Umbrella Movement, MastaMic disagreed with local recording artists
who claimed to “hate politics,” yet he also expressed his reluctance to
be a “martyr for democracy” (Hong Kong Apple Daily Reporter, 2013).
MastaMic is alluding to how Occupy Central emphasized a spirit of
self-sacrifice for the larger cause of Hong Kong democracy. Although
MastaMic does not elaborate on this remark, it is likely that he is refer-
ring to the threat to the business side of his career as a full-time musi-
cian. Denise Ho, a hugely popular singer in Hong Kong, for example,
revealed that 80 percent of her income came from sources affiliated with
mainland China and has vanished since her high-profile participation
of the Umbrella Movement (Griffiths, 2017). The cost of expressing a
political opinion that is unpopular in mainland China is too great for the
Hong Kong creative industry.
Considering how Hong Kong rap music is already a marginal indus-
try, it is understandable why Hong Kong rappers did not take a proactive
role in the Umbrella Movement, let alone transgress the movement’s
principles of peace and love. It is against the above backdrop that I
examine the post–Umbrella Movement popularity of the parody rap
group the Low Mays.

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The Low Mays and Parody Rap

Parody is “the intentional reproduction, usually for critical, humorous,
or satirical purposes, of an original whose features are exaggerated, dis-
torted, inverted, or in some way recognizably changed” (Sage, 2011, p.
975). In their 2017 mixtape Triadism, the Low Mays’ target of parody is
the CCP’s history and party discourse. From the group’s name and musi-
cal influences to the lyrical content and visuals, the Low Mays extensively
utilize parody to challenge the conventions of Hip-Hop and, by exten-
sion, to offer a non-self-restraining portrayal of the anxieties and ten-
sions between pro-democracy supporters in Hong Kong and the CCP
government.
The term “Low May” (lo mei) is a twist on crude Cantonese slang
referring to one’s mother. The group’s full Chinese name, Mai kei lou
mei san kei nguk, literally means “Mickey Low May’s Fantastic House,”
which is direct reference to the popular Disney Channel program Mickey
Mouse’s Clubhouse. In addition to “The Low Mays,” the group has two
other monikers, namely “The Six Billionaires” and “The Democratic
Fullham Alliance.” Both names acknowledge the middle-class socioeco-
nomic background of the group’s members. The latter name alludes to
the residential building Fulham Garden, which is situated in an affluent
part of Hong Kong where at least one of the members resides.2
Due to their early successes with the songs “Pekyau Problems” (2015),
a remix of A$AP Rocky’s “Fuckin Problem” (2012) and “Pekyau Street”
(2017), both of which went viral through widespread sharing in online
forums, the Low Mays are often characterized as a “gangsta rap” group.
Pekyau is Cantonese slang for aggravated assault, and it is a recurring
theme in Hong Kong triad/gangster films in the 1990s. While there are
plenty of references to Hong Kong triad symbols like drugs, prostitution,
and gang violence, the delivery and lyrics of the Low Mays emcees are
over the top. For example, emcee Butcher Fong threatens that he will
“cut you piece by piece and slowly your dick / Pretend it’s fish sausages
and sell it to Aji Ichiban.”3 Indeed, with members sporting rap monikers
like Crème Supreme, Yung Bumblebee, and Butcher Fong, listeners eas-
ily get a sense that the Low Mays care less about authenticity than enter-
tainment and comedic values. Visually, the Low Mays are comparable to
Indonesian rapper Rich Brian (formerly known as Rich Chigga), both of
which dress in stereotypically nerdy attire in music videos while deliver-
ing outlandishly “tough” lyrical content. Unlike their local predecessor
LMF or their peers MastaMic, the Low Mays are not concerned about the

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Hip-Hop mantra of “keepin’ it real.” As Crème Supreme observes, the

Hong Kong Hip-Hop scene oftentimes takes itself too seriously. The Low
Mays’ objective is to challenge taboo and, more importantly, to have fun
with the songwriting process (Hong Kiu, 2017).
Building on their niche of parodying and paying homage to 1990s
Hong Kong triad films, the Low Mays released their first political rap
album, the twelve-song mixtape Triadism. The cover art parodies a
Maoist-era Communist Chinese propaganda poster and replaces the face
of the Mao Zedong with that of emcee Yung Bumblebee. The caption of
the propaganda poster, instead of typical slogans praising Mao and his
revolutionary ideals, reads: “The Low Mays Are Invincible!” and “Pekyau
Every Day! A New Revolutionary Path Will Open!” The juxtaposition of
pekyau and Communist Chinese propaganda sums up the overall theme
of Triadism: a double parody of Hong Kong triad culture and CCP poli-
tics. Using instrumentals from popular trap songs such as Desiigner’s
“Panda” (2016) and Migos’s “Bad and Boujee” (2017), the Low Mays rap
from the perspective of CCP extremists who display thug-like behavior in
their destruction of all traces of democracy in Hong Kong.
While the hugely popular and controversial mumble rap/trap sound
appears to be the sonic foundation of Triadism, it is also the subject of par-
ody for the Low Mays. The relatively unclear vocal delivery of lyrics over
a hard Hip-Hop instrumental characterizes mumble rap, and many tra-
ditional rap fans consider the genre a sacrifice of lyricism for catchiness.
Yet the Low Mays do not even make their own instrumentals. Instead,
they rap over popular trap instrumentals, in the vein of a Lil Wayne or
Joyner Lucas mixtape. “Chairman Hao” is a prime example of the Low
Mays’ use of the trap genre as a vehicle for their political critique of the
CCP. The title of the song plays on Mao Zedong and luxury real estate
(houjaak). Hong Kong is home to the world’s most expensive housing
market (GB Times, 2018). The pairing of Mao and the housing market
is a subtle critique of mainland China’s role in inflating Hong Kong
property prices to astronomical values. Remixing Desiigner’s “Panda,”
the Low Mays rappers imitate Desiigner’s flow and deliver the lyrics in a
sarcastic Hong Kong–style putonghua, the language used in mainland
China. Lyrically, “Chairman Hao” offers a mix of triad/thug talk, the
1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, and Hong Kong pro-democracy pro-
tests. Crème Supreme declares: “Fullham Party hates ‘One Person, One
Vote’/ BMW Tank rolling in, you’d be shitting your pants.” Being one of
the Six Billionaires, Crème Supreme is a caricature of mainland Chinese
who fanatically support the Communist Party’s violent repression of

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democracy on Chinese soil, in exchange for his ascent to the class of the
nouveau riche. The lyrics and delivery arguably contain discriminatory
elements toward mainland Chinese, and do not comply with the peace-
loving standards of wo lei fei fei. Yet such is the transgression of politi-
cal correctness that the Low Mays are engaged in. As Crème Supreme
remarks in an interview, “The Low Mays are not toeing the fine line of
politically correctness. They are absolutely politically incorrect” (Hong
Kiu, 2017, translation my own).
The song “Marx” is one of the Low Mays’ most ambitious parodic
assaults against the CCP. Rapping over the instrumental of “Sneakin”
(2016) by Drake and 21 Savage, emcee Matt Da Bospel, whose name plays
on the biblical Gospel of Matthew, begins his verse with a braggadocio
couplet: “Matt Da Bospel is greater than Marx / He is so rich that Marx
the thinker becomes Marx the beggar.” These two lines are significant, as
they establish the song’s premise as a deviance rather than an adherence
to Marxist thought. Conventional wisdom suggests that the CCP is based
upon Maoism, which is Mao’s reading of Marxism. However, Maoism is
more accurately described as a product of Marxism-Leninism: Leninism’s
emphasis on seizing and holding power, in the name of Marxist-inspired
ideals, is precisely a defining feature of Mao’s involvement in modern
Chinese history. As Matt Da Bospel proclaims in the hook of the song:
“We are evolving each time we pekyau / You are still an ape / I’m covered
with tats and I ain’t done yet / I don’t care about your livelihood.” Hence
the notion of power struggle akin to gangster turf wars becomes an over-
arching theme throughout the song. In the second verse, emcee Healthy
Wah further illuminates the exploitation of Marxism as a means to seiz-
ing power: “Matt Da Bospel chooses his words carefully / I am Marx. To
fucking hell with the democratic movement / No universities shall be
allowed to build libraries / Burn all the books and bury all the scholars.”
Instead of following Marxist historical determinism, the Democratic
Fullham Alliance, as an extension of the CCP, proactively seizes and con-
solidates power through the silencing of different voices and censoring
of information. While this is not to say that mainland Chinese society is
under absolute censorship, China is ranked 176th out of 180 countries in
terms of its press freedom (Reporters Without Borders, 2018).

Conclusion
With descriptions of tattoos, violence, and lust of power, the Low Mays
use gangster imagery to evoke the listener’s imagination of Maoism

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taken to the extreme. Through this two-tier parody, the Low Mays are
exposing the hypocrisy behind the CCP’s Marxist ideals of equality and
liberation of the imperialized nations as thug-like. While the Chinese
Communist Party and the pro-Beijing Hong Kong government con-
stantly reassure Hong Kongers and observers of Hong Kong that the
city maintains a high degree of autonomy, the facts suggest otherwise.
It is precisely this hypocrisy that Hong Kongers, and especially the par-
ticipants in the Umbrella Movement, are so repulsed by. The Low Mays
do not resort to the peace-loving yet self-restraining principle of wo lei
fei fei, nor do they adopt an angry and righteous approach of protest.
Instead, the Low Mays’ parody rap offers a more personal, vivid, and
sophisticated insight about the tension between Hong Kong and CCP. In
this sense, I consider the Low Mays’ Triadism as filling the gaping hole in
political rap that strikes at the heart of Hong Kong’s democratic move-
ment and its plights.
As I have mentioned, the dual pressures of political and economic fac-
tors mean it is difficult for political rap about China to survive in Hong
Kong. Despite generating much excitement in the Hong Kong indepen-
dent cultural scene with their parody of mainland Chinese encroach-
ment, the Low Mays have not followed up Triadism with more political
rap about Hong Kong–China relations. Instead, their subsequent two
releases, Fulham Space Station (2018) and Life Winners (2019) have saw
them parodying other Hong Kong sociocultural issues like the world-
leading poverty gap, internet phenomena like the flat-earth movement
and TED talks, and even themselves as Hong Kong pop superstars. After
several sold-out shows in Hong Kong’s most prestigious underground
venues, the Low Mays performed alongside Hip-Hop superstars like
Erykah Badu and Khalid at the 2018 Clockenflap Music Festival.
Despite the change in lyrical direction, the Low Mays appeared that
their popularity would only continue to grow. However, during the
peak of the 2019 Anti-Extradition protest (also known as the “Water
Revolution”), the Low Mays frontman Crème Supreme was embroiled
in an online controversy for an Instagram post that was interpreted by
netizens as promoting political apathy, and even supporting Communist
Chinese oppression. Although the Low Mays and Crème Supreme
quickly clarified their stance as pro-free speech rather than pro-
Communist China, the Low Mays failed to regain their momentum in
the Hong Kong Hip-Hop scene. If the dramatic rise and fall of the Low
Mays are any indication of the future of Hong Kong Hip-Hop, it appears
that political rap in Hong Kong will continue to flourish. Whether such

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a politicization of rap is an ideal direction for the culture of Hong Kong

Hip-Hop, remains a topic to be explored in future studies.

Notes

1. The first batch of Hong Kong rap songs that impacted mainstream culture
is arguably by the comedic duo SoftHard. The duo’s songs, featuring radio hosts
Eric Kwok and Jan Lamb, covered a range of social issues, including consumer-
ism, fetishism, drug abuse, and sexual diseases. See Li, 2006, pp. 20–22; and
Chu, 2017, p. 138.
2. Coincidentally, members of the pioneering gangsta rap group N.W.A,
including Ice Cube, were also brought up in middle-class families. It is worth fur-
ther exploring whether socioeconomic class allows rappers to have a greater dis-
tance from their subject matters, and therefore more creative space for portrayal.
3. Aji Ichiban is a chain store in Hong Kong that sells snacks imported from
all across East Asia, but particularly Japan.

References

Artist Profile: FAMA. 2018. TG Management Company Limited. https://www.tg

mhk.com/fama. Accessed May 8, 2021.
Bonnette, L. M. (2015). Pulse of the people: Political rap music and black politics. Phila-
delphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Chan, K. Y. (2002). Exploring youth subculture in Hong Kong: A case study on
the local band LazyMuthaFucka (LMF) (MPhil thesis, Chinese University of
Hong Kong).
Chi, D. H. (2018, January 23). Hong Kong ranked world’s most expensive hous-
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Discography

The Low Mays (2017). Triadism. Hong Kong: C.W.A Records.

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