MC HotDog is in Da House!
It's an understatement to say that not speaking a Chinese language, whether that's Mandarin or Cantonese, makes you miss out on lots of stuff. Movies, books and music are largely wasted on us English speakers, but traveling to international poker tournaments gives us at least a little insight into what happens on this side of the world.
While we are mostly familiar with Jay-Z, Kanye West and Snoop Dogg, the Chinese youth knows all about MC HotDog's latest hits. Today we're getting a chance to cover this Taiwanese superstar in the APPT Seoul Main Event, and Taiwan's country manager Calvin Shueh told us how the man known as the 'Godfather of Chinese Hip-Hop' loves the game of poker.
"Back in Taipei he plays poker probably once a week," Shueh said about his love for the game.
"He can't just take the subway in Taipei and also, when he's in Macau he's constantly taking pictures and signing autographs for fans."
In 2007 Chung-Jen Yao, MC HotDog's real name, won the prestigious Golden Melody Award Album of the Year Award and his latest album titled Ghetto Superstar took down the Album of the Year award at the Golden Indie Music Awards in 2013. A new album is currently under construction, and perhaps the following song will even make an appearance.
In order to celebrate his ties with PokerStars MCHotDog released a song called Pokerstar, which currently has close to 250,000 views on YouTube. While that might sound like a lot, for someone like MC HotDog it's not much at all. His 10 most famous videos on YouTube all have over a million views, and the highest ranked one comes in at 4.5 million.
With references to poker being a sport and not a gamble, NBA super stars LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony, and raising under the gun it's clear that MC HotDog knows what he's talking about.
While a busy touring schedule keeps him away from the big tournaments tables it's understandable that a big score might be lacking from his poker resume, but a man talented as he is will clearly have his moment in the poker spotlights at some point.