In 2002, Jin Auyeung took over hip-hop by winning a weekly freestyle competition for seven consecutive weeks on 106 & Park. His debut song, “Learn Chinese,” was on regular rotation in my elementary school, and my friends would holler out the Cantonese ad-libs. It was a moment that felt similar to Linsanity, Jeremy Lin’s two-week run of 40-point consecutive basketball games, several years later. 

Jin continues his work under the slightly more descriptive name MC Jin, and appeared on a recent episode of one of my favorite podcasts, Fun with Dumb. 

The conversation reminded me of the time I interviewed him nearly a decade ago for a project I started with friends, an interview series called Prologue (with coverage at Hypebeast):

This episode came together around a year after I shipped the first episode of Prologue (with Ryan Lewis). I was catching up with my friend Donny, who was doing a school event where MC Jin would make an appearance and offered to connect us for an interview. The rest is history, and our interview with MC Jin turned Prologue from a one episode wonder into a series.