Andrew Yang has collaborated with Chinese American rapper Jin Au-Yeung, better known as MC Jin, in a song released on Thursday that extols Yang’s merits as a potential mayor of New York City.
“Yang for NY” shows MC Jin handing out CDs for the song in Flushing, in the Queens borough, and rapping about Yang as the mayoral candidate tours New York City and interacts with its residents. At the end of the footage, MC Jin and Yang finally cross paths.
In an Instagram post promoting the song, MC Jin wrote: “When [Andrew Yang] called me and told me that he would be running for mayor of NYC, I thought he had a position at city hall in mind for me. But I guess creating the official anthem is probably more up my alley!”
In an email to supporters, Yang wrote that the song came “at a hard time for New York’s Asian community, and really the whole city.”
“Asians are seeing themselves in the news for the most painful of reasons,” Yang said. “But with MC Jin, you have an iconic Asian American hip-hop artist showing optimism, vibrancy and a path to the future. That’s why it is so important our volunteers ― and every New Yorker ― see this video. This video sends a powerful message that New York’s recovery and New York’s culture belong to everyone.”
This is not the first time that MC Jin has collaborated with Yang, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate whose campaign promoted the concept of offering every adult American a $1,000 monthly check. The pair previously chatted on a March episode of Yang’s podcast, “Yang Speaks.” There, Yang asked the Florida-born emcee about his experiences winning fame in the freestyle circuit and on the BET program “106 & Park” in the early 2000s.
MC Jin would later become the first Asian American rapper signed to a major record label, the Ruff Ryders, releasing an album titled “The Rest Is History” in 2004 before going independent, fostering an overseas career in Hong Kong from 2008 to 2011, and eventually returning to the U.S.
Critical reception to the collaboration between Yang and MC Jin has been mixed, with several on Twitter reacting positively to the song.
Others, like journalist Wilfred Chan, criticized the collaboration in a Vulture article as an example of Yang’s “proud, incorrigible corniness.”
Yang, who has sold himself as a champion of small business, has been critiqued as out of touch with New Yorkers. In his article, Chan referenced recent moments when the candidate called what appeared to be a grocery store a “bodega,” as well as his failure to join other mayoral candidates in speaking out about the closure of Jing Fong, a famous Manhattan Chinatown dim sum landmark that employed 180 unionized workers and was forced to shutter in early March due to the coronavirus pandemic.