Chinese hip hop group Higher Brothers are back with a new album and world tour

“We love performing in Hong Kong; it’s one of our favourite cities,” says MaSiWei, 26, the band’s unofficial leader. “We always have a good time.”

Higher Brothers last toured North America in early 2018 and the experience of playing in the home of hip hop clearly left a big impression.

“It was like a dream come true,” says MaSiWei. “We got to go to all the places that we had only seen in video games and movies. But we missed Chinese food a lot.”

He’s joined in the band by Psy. P, and Melo who he met eight years ago, as well as plus-size fan favourite DZknow, originally from Nanjing, who moved to Chengdu to make music with the others after meeting them online.

Their name comes from the mascots of home appliances giant Haier, a pair of boys who were made famous in a 1995 cartoon in which they travel the world. The band adopted the name when they noticed the logo on an air conditioning unit.

After a 2016 mixtape, they released their debut album “Black Cab” in 2017, followed by the “Journey To The West” EP in 2018 and second album “Five Stars” in February this year. Rapping in Mandarin and the Sichuan dialect, with frequent injections of English, their lyrics are grounded in the everyday realities of life in China, with songs like 7-11, WeChat and Black Cab, the latter about Chengdu’s unlicensed cab drivers.

However, it was their single Made In China, from the “Black Cab” album, that really made them. Featuring a guest verse from US star Famous Dex, the song is a robust defence – albeit also a very funny one – of Chinese culture and the nation’s contributions to the world.

Higher Brothers have ridden the wave of rap’s growing popularity in China, spurred by the success of TV series The Rap of China, which has racked up 1.3 billion views and made stars of several contestants. Before that, Chengdu was just about the only place in the country with a home-grown hip hop scene, centred around the CDC (Chengdu Shuochang Huiguan) collective, which helped give birth to Higher Brothers.

Last year, however, the nascent nationwide scene received a slap down in the form of a government edict that blacklisted certain songs and banned the promotion of hip hop culture on TV. Higher Brothers are one of the few acts to have escaped censure and this has led to suggestions that they are more acceptable to the authorities because their lyrics are pro-China; if so, this is a very non-nationalistic form of national pride, one that rightly seeks to celebrate achievements and counter stereotypes.

Their overseas breakthrough was accelerated when they signed to US record label and media company 88rising, which focuses on Asian and Asian-American artists. Made In China blew up partly because of 88rising’s reaction video to the single, featuring US hip hop stars including the likes of Migos and Lil Yachty, every single one of whom was a fan of the song and video, some to a rhapsodic degree.

“It felt great,” says MaSiWei of the video. “Like all of our handiwork and skills were finally recognised.”

DZknow was even compared in the video by rising US star Kyle to a Chinese version of Biggie Smalls, aka The Notorious BIG, universally acknowledged as one of the greatest rappers ever, who was murdered in 1997. Says DZknow, with the deadpan humour that is his signature: “When Kyle called me the Chinese Biggie that was very nice of him, but I hope I don’t have the same fate.”

The band have also collaborated with a range of US hip hop royalty, including Ski Mask the Slump God, Denzel Curry, JID, Soulja Boy, ScHoolboy Q. MaSiWei says the latter was a particular highlight. “Putting out a song with ScHoolboy Q was a big moment for us. DZKnow used to remix his songs when he was in middle school, and now we have songs together. It’s crazy.”

Higher Brothers, Mar 27, 7.30pm, Star Hall, Kitec, 1 Trademart Drive, Kowloon Bay, HK$490, HK Ticketing

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