MC Jin

Jin Au-Yeung (born June 4, 1982), known professionally as MC Jin, is an American rapper, songwriter, actor and comedian of Chinese descent.

Jin is notable for being the first Asian American solo rapper to be signed to a major record label in the United States.

Jin Au-Yeung was born on June 4, 1982, in Miami, Florida, to Hong Kong immigrants of Hakka descent.

He was raised in the general Miami area, where his parents owned a Chinese restaurant and Jin attended John F. Kennedy Middle School in North Miami Beach.

Jin went on to attend North Miami Beach Senior High School, from which he graduated in 2000.

After graduating, Jin decided to forgo college and begin his rap career.

Shortly afterwards, his parents closed the restaurant and the family moved in 2001 to Queens, New York City.

While in New York, Jin participated in many rap battles with his peers.

Jin's big break came in 2002 when the BET program 106 & Park invited local rappers to compete in a segment known as Freestyle Friday.

Unlike other competitors, Jin occasionally spoke Cantonese in his freestyle verses.

After winning seven battles in a row, he was inducted into the Freestyle Friday Hall of Fame.

The night of the ceremony, he announced that he had signed a deal with the Ruff Ryders Entertainment label.

His first single under Ruff Ryders was titled "Learn Chinese" featuring Haitian rapper Wyclef Jean.

It contained a sample from song "Blind Man Can See It", by James Brown (also sampled by Das EFX and Lord Finesse).

The second single for the album was originally supposed to be "I Got a Love", featuring and produced by Kanye West.

The album was originally scheduled to be released in the summer of 2003 but was delayed for over a year by the label.

Ballen was also the first promoter to bring Jin to mainland China in 2003 for his "The Rest is History" tour.

In October 2004, Jin released his debut album, The Rest Is History, which reached number 54 on the Billboard Top 200 albums chart.

The two singles, "Learn Chinese" and "Senorita", were not major mainstream successes and the album only sold 19,000 units in its first week.

On April 23, 2005, Jin and rapper Serius Jones engaged in a rap battle.

The battle was featured on Fight Klub DVD.

On May 18, 2005, Jin revealed that he would be putting his rap career on hold in order to explore other options.

To make this clear, he recorded a song titled "I Quit", produced by the Golden Child.

The announcement was widely misunderstood to have marked the end of Jin's rap career.

However, he later re-emerged under a different alias, The Emcee, and freestyled over such songs as Jay-Z's "Dear Summer."

He released a single called "Top 5 (Dead or Alive)" in which he explored the history of hip-hop's greatest artists, using lyrics.

The legendary DJ Kool Herc, who is credited as the founder of hip-hop, appears in Jin's music video.

With independent label CraftyPlugz/Draft Records, Jin released his second album, The Emcee's Properganda, on October 25, 2005.

Jin collaborated in 2005 with Queens-born rapper Creature on his song "Never Say Die," which also featured Slug and Busdriver.

Jin was also featured on Taiwanese pop artist Leehom Wang's 2005 album Heroes of Earth.

Jin left the label in 2006.

Together, Jin and Leehom performed their "Heroes of the Earth" collaboration live in Shanghai on February 16, 2006, at an event arranged by China-resident American A&R exec Andrew Ballen.

Jin released two albums in 2006.

The first, 100 Grand Jin, was a mixtape that was released on August 29, 2006.

The single released from the album is "FYI", for which the rapper shot and released a music video.

The second album is Jin's third LP, I Promise.

On his MySpace, Jin mentioned that he was working on another English album named "Birthdays, Funerals and Things in Between".

Jin premiered the song, "Open Letter to Obama," on April 24, 2007, which made him become 1st on then-Presidential nominee Barack Obama's Top 8 list on MySpace.

On April 16, 2007, Jin made a tribute song to the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre called "Rain, Rain Go Away".

Later that year, Jin decided to make his November 2006 online album, I Promise available in retail stores; it was given an October 23, 2007, release.