Malaysian Chinese hip-hop given a voice by rapper Dato’ Maw through his ‘Cina Music’

Malaysian Chinese artists have been under-represented in the Asian hip-hop boom. Rapper Dato’ Maw wants to rectify that with his ‘Cina Music’

Dato’ Maw raps in multiple tongues – Mandarin, Cantonese, Malay, the Penang Hokkien dialect and English – peppered with an infusion of local slang

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Malaysian Chinese rapper Dato’ Maw is going against the grain with a new and hyper-localised spin on hip hop that he defines as “Cina Music”. Photo: courtesy of Dato’ Maw

Marco Ferrarese

Published: 1:15pm, 24 Jan 2021Updated: 12:51pm, 25 Jan 2021

Corrected [12:48pm, 25 Jan, 2021]

[12:48pm, 25 Jan, 2021]
This story has been clarified to make clear that the word “Cina” is used to refer to Malaysian Chinese in general, but that it has also been used in a derogatory way by Malay nationalist extremists

Hip-hop music has come a long way since its 1970s inception in New York in the United States. The genre has, since it became a globalised art form, spread to Southeast Asia, including Malaysia – where it exploded in the late 1990s.

Malaysian hip hop became popular when pioneering Malay rapper duo Too Phat, who alternated lyrics in English and Malay, started airing on national radio in 1999. Their second album “Plan B”, which came out in 2001, went on to sell 4.5 million copies.

Twenty years later, of the two Phats, veteran MC Joe Flizzow heads the Southeast Asian operations of hip-hop label Def Jam Recordings, which opened a regional headquarters in Singapore in September 2019.

Featuring more than 20 artists from Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand, the label is banking on the multiracial and multilingual character of the region, where hip hop appeals to thousands. But a quick look at its roster of artists reveals that one ethnic group appears sorely under-represented: the Malaysian Chinese.

Dato’ Maw is a Penang-born Malaysian Chinese rapper. Photo: courtesy of Dato’ Maw

“I kind of understand why, because the Chinese population of Malaysia is quite small, and the chance of making it big in our Malay- and English language-dominated music industry is also quite small,” says Dato’ Maw, a Penang-born Malaysian Chinese rapper whose name is a play on the similar-sounding Mandarin words for “tapir” and “devil”, and the Malaysian honorary title “Datuk”.