"Bring some tissues and a diaper, because your ass is going to be swollen."
...Imagine Run DMC with a splash of Pretty Ricky and some thick Asian accents and you've got a good idea of the Notorious MSG sound. Since the release of their 2004 debut album, Die Hungry, they've been making fans' faces hurt from laughing with songs like "Straight out of Canton", "Dim Sum Girl," and "No Good Muthabitch."
...hell-bent on bringing more fun and danger back to popular music, these guys are just the hustlers to do it.
...the charming yet virulent rap group, comprised of front man Hong Kong Fever, heartfelt crooner Down Lo-Mein and the silent but strong Hunan Bomb, are more accurately likened to Asian American Sidney Poitiers for our post-modern times.
...this bold New York Chinatown rap trio [is] challenging racist barriers in mainstream entertainment and revolutionizing Asian American media representation.
... the showcase promoted a number of underground Asian bands, but most of the audience at the Knitting Factory in TriBeCa on this Sunday night had come out to see a three-man rap group, the Notorious MSG, whose account of an unusual trajectory from the kitchens of Chinatown restaurants to the local stage was the big draw...
"It was an assault on the senses," said Michael Nuñez, 31, a freelance art producer who lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. "Seeing them live, clearly, that is the only way to soak in what MSG are all about."
...While their look veers toward the wacky, there’s a serious side to Notorious MSG: its determination to illuminate the hard lot of Chinese immigrants working in Chinatown’s restaurant underbelly. “Americans don’t know it’s a hard life, very dangerous,” Hong Kong Fever says. MSG’s former drummer was shot to death last year while making a delivery. What’s unclear is whether the motivation was robbery or payback from the group’s gangland past. But the group feels his vulnerability was plain. “They see you on a bicycle,” D-Lo says, “and think you are weak.”—Howard Halle
...Sometimes, they wear matching Adidas track suits. Other times, black leather jackets and thick gold chains. But on the cover of their album Die Hungry, they're wearing the uniforms of restaurant workers the world over: white shirts and black pants. Together, they make up the Notorious MSG.
...the response to the band is pretty positive. The music on their websites is being downloaded fast, and not just in the US... they're booking more live shows and have already been on MTV, and they're talking to Comedy Central about developing a series.
...MSG is both an outlet for their rage at the system and a tool to raise awareness of the difficulties facing the Asian restaurant worker. But as you may have guessed, MSG are not hip hop activists. Channeling Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, NWA, and Cypress Hill all at once, they are satirists, brilliantly imploding notions of race, ethnicity and the American Dream.
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