HKCEE results have just come out, but instead of celebrating with karaoke, Form 5 students Lilwang Siu and Rico Wong (aka Lil and Rico) are battling away in the Sai Yeung Choi Street pedestrian zone in Mongkok—rap battling. June Ng finds out why.

HK Magazine: What got you out on the streets?
Lilwang Siu and Rico Wong: Because we’re not good enough to put on a show in a proper venue, and we don’t have enough money because we’re poor students! Playing on the street is free, and it’s the best way to reach the crowd—we want Hong Kongers to learn more about hip-hop and beatboxing. We and other performers know each other from the “Cypher” gathering—it’s a bi-weekly hip-hop gathering at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre Piazza that lets us jam freestyle. One day, we thought, “Instead of playing here to entertain ourselves, why don’t we get on the streets and let more people know about it?”

HK: So what do you guys normally rap about? Bitches? Booze? Weed?
LS, RL: We mostly rap about beings broke and needing money. We rap about current affairs, as well. We do it in Cantonese because it’s our mother-tongue and rapping in Chinese is more difficult than rapping in English. A lot of people misunderstand and think that hip-hop is full of foul language and that rappers are all bad. We just want to tell people that’s not the case.

HK: You have about 20 people playing each show. Why so many?
LS, RL: With more people we can take turns and not exhaust ourselves in such hot weather. It can last longer as well—at least for an hour and a half. We once came out with just three of us, and we wanted to go home after half an hour.

HK: You’re in the pedestrian zone in Mongkok. Why here?
LS, RL: It’s a very diversified area, and it’s really crowded. If you want to get heard, where else could be better?

HK: But I saw the police moving the crowd on...
LS, RL: The crowd blocked the way to some shops on the road: later on it’ll be fine. This is our first time so we’re not very good at making sure the audience is somewhere they won’t block the road. We did actually ask the police if we had to apply for any documents, but honestly I don’t think they took us seriously—the duty officer at the police station asked us to go to the Lands Department to apply, but they said only charities could apply, and we should go to the the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department. The FEHD said that they used to have a license for people performing in public with amplifiers, but the license has been discontinued—so they asked us to go back to the police. Eventually the police issued a notice to us and said it’d be fine. I think we were toyed with a bit.

HK: You are both young and will become part of the Hong Kong workforce soon. How do you see the city in 10 years?
LS, RL: There’ll probably be more buildings. But we really hope that there’ll be more open venues for people to perform in public: West Kowloon should spare some space for young people to do alternative stuff. And we really hope the air will be better, so we can still walk along the streets and don’t have to hide in malls all the time.


Visit youtube.com/watch?v=EyUBJ37vA7s or youtube.com/watch?v=rC36iM2lVsE for clips. For details on when Cypher meet, visit the hip-hop group at www.discuss.com.hk.