At that time, many works circulated on their Internet were pirated. At that time, piracy was quite serious. I found some Chinese lawyers to help us catch these pirated copies. It was a bit like asking YouTube to help us file a claim. That's right. The same thing on Bilibili is to help with claims , but it’s half the effort and you can’t find anyone. You don’t know who is piracy, so you keep calling a lawyer to deal with it. As a result, after the release of "Glass Heart", it was directly banned. It seems like an unexpected bonus since all the songs have been pulled down and you don’t have to do them anymore, right, otherwise we would have been caught half to death with just one move to take them all down. Hiho, everyone, I am Zhiqi. Welcome back to the strong. My friend is off camera. There is also our project. Yangyang will join us today to talk about it. Hello everyone, I am Yangyang. Today’s guest is Huang Mingzhi, a creative genius who has been acclaimed and popular every time he releases his works . He has released 11 albums, including He has been nominated for the Golden Melody Award 7 times . In addition to being of high quality, his songs also have high traffic. For example, the song "Drifting to the North" has become popular all over Asia. It has been played 160 million times on YouTube. In the past few years, it has also been played 160 million times. The song "Glass Heart" was banned by China because it satirized the CCP. The song also exceeded 10 million views in one week. It can be said to be the overlord of traffic. Finally, the craziest thing about Huang Mingzhi is his controversial singer label. In addition to the entire Wikipedia In addition to introducing his controversies on the page, he himself has been wanted for investigation and even arrest by the Malaysian government many times . Today we are going to get to know this super crazy Huang Mingzhi Namewee. You can say hello to our audience first. Hello, hello, everyone. My name is Namewee. It’s the first time for Huang Mingzhi to come here. Before we start, let’s have some business service time. First of all, I want to ask Namewee. How many times have you been wanted by the Malaysian police ? Why are you wanted ? There are two kinds of wanted warrants for many reasons. The first one is to ask you to come and report, and then if you don’t come , it will issue a wanted notice. Yes, I understand. This is the first one. The other one is that it will ask you to come to report , but if you are not in the country , it will issue an international warrant. The wanted order is the kind where all the customs at the airport are waiting for you. As soon as you arrive, the red light is on. Because we are all automatic, you usually pass with a bang. I would say to normal people, if your passport is stamped If you stare at it , you will surround it with two gates, and then the red light will turn on. I don’t know if you have tried it. I guess you haven’t tried it. Very few people have tried it, so if you surround it, the red light will turn on . When the police come to arrest you, they must handcuff you and arrest you. It is a step. So if you count this, it is about 80 times, 100 times, 80 times, and you are locked in . So there are 80 times. Yes, as long as you go through the customs, you will be arrested because there are several types of customs over there , some of which are airplanes and some are land, even if you come back from Thailand or Singapore, you will be arrested, but when you are locked up for the first time, you have Have you ever panicked ? Yes, I don’t know why the red light turned on because I already knew I would be arrested. But I didn’t know that I would be arrested under such circumstances , and it was a bit embarrassing because everyone looked over and the red light turned on like this. Why are there so many times that you are arrested and taken in every time , but it releases you again, so you will be arrested again next time ? I don’t have this thing to share with you. This is for reference only. I think the police in all countries around the world There is an unwritten rule that they will politely ask you to take a statement. When they are polite, it means that there is no arrest warrant, which means they have no power to arrest you. They will still mark you and ask you if you are free to take a statement. When you give a confession , he will suddenly be very polite. Then when he comes, he will talk to you nicely and then suddenly arrest you. So everyone is the police. Suddenly he will smile with you or be very polite , or buy fruit and drinks for you. You guys You have to be really careful because if he doesn't have a wanted warrant, he can't break into your house, so if he comes to find you in that situation where he's not wanted, he'll be very polite and try to trick you or deceive you. Come on or something like that , so you said you wanted me to find out which one is different . There are domestic and international wanted ones. In this very polite state, he might catch something new because of this confession. Are you really wanted because recording a confession is a duty of the people? If you are called to the police and someone suspects you have something, they will ask you to record a statement. Then they have a very bad trick, that is, they He said that if you don't finish recording your confession, you will be locked up. Have you experienced this in real life ? Yes, you were lied to. He was very polite and tricked me into taking the confession. Then he got off work and couldn't help but took out the handcuffs . I locked them up for 4 to 5 days . Your family couldn't be found in there . You couldn't find them at all because your phone was suddenly confiscated and you didn't even have time to say goodbye . So you were very scared and you didn't know. When can you go out? It's completely out of touch. You weren't scared at the time. You want to stop touching such taboo topics. This is their purpose . They want everyone to shut up . He wants you to shut up because many people will. When talking about the 3Rs in Malaysia, it is like religion, the royal family, and race cannot be discussed. What do you think of this kind of thing ? In fact, I have encountered 2 of the 3Rs you mentioned. Except for the royal family, I have encountered all the rest. The common point of these 3Rs is that in fact He just doesn't want you to speak. He does it on purpose . In fact, there are people behind him who want to control it because they use these 3Rs to control their political power . Maybe there is less of this feeling here in Taiwan . We use ethnic groups to canvass votes, maybe in Taiwan. If the generation is like this , it means that people from other provinces and aboriginal people from other provinces are like this. We over there are particularly good at playing these tricks. That is to say, if you say 3R, religion, race, royal family , I first talk about race, and they will come to canvass for votes. I am from the same race as us. You must vote for me. We will protect the rights of our race. Think about it. If an Aboriginal person comes out and talks like this, you will be more willing to vote for him . If you are an Aboriginal person, right? If a person is good ( Said) We Han people must vote for the Han people. If you don’t vote for the Han people and you vote for him, what will he do to us? We Han people must unite. He talks about this kind of thing. This is a bargaining chip for them , so there is someone next to you. If you talk about these things, he will sue you on behalf of that race and then arrest you and tell you to stop talking about it. If everyone uses race and it is no longer effective, he will start using religion , because in Malaysia religion is bigger than race . I want to say that our religion is like this. God sent me, so you have to vote for me because I represent God. Allah represents God. If he says this, if you don't vote for him , it seems that you are wrong - you know what - it is ungodly, so they They use religious methods to attract votes or attract people to like them. On the other hand, if you raise your views on religion, they will try to get you to stop you from speaking. The royal family is even more nonsense. What has not been mentioned is the royal family. They were actually pirates hundreds or thousands of years ago . They were all pirates and then they robbed that territory and it became theirs. So now where we live they say it belongs to the royal family. So you are abroad. There is no problem in saying so. They will broadcast it the same way. I am telling the truth. If I think they are going to target me, I think this is history and everyone must admit it. This reminds me that before, the general audience may not be aware of the extent of speech control in Malaysia , but I remember very well that a friend of mine was going to Malaysia before and he asked me, Zhiqi, I know you have the MCN card, can you help me turn off some videos from that country because he doesn’t want to go there? If you cause trouble over there, I will say that if you have this need , I can really help you do this. I can lock the viewing in a specific area , so I specifically lock up Malaysia and they can't arrest you for this, right? Right, because they just can't see it and they won't arrest it. If it's a foreigner, it's okay . They can't do anything about it because they know that this is their own evil intentions and it has nothing to do with the foreigners' remarks. To them, this is all The establishment of prestige is effective for political control , so we must find ways to prevent the people from challenging these prestiges. Foreigners will be a little afraid of these things , but I want to help netizens ask a question . Many people are concerned about pornography. Mingzhi’s impression is that you are a controversial singer. Many people think that your songs contain a lot of swear words, which can easily teach children bad words , or they think you are obscene and disrespectful of women , and may even expose others . Why would you choose to be like this? There are no creative ways. In fact, I have many creative methods that don’t include these things, because it mainly depends on the theme. If the theme is suitable for putting swear words in, I will put it in. If the song is angry or criticizing, if I suddenly become very literary It's strange that I based on the theme what material should be put in , and what kind of lyrics should be written and what kind of expression should be used. You said those who disrespect women may have some vulgar lyrics , but for me, that kind of song It has to be said like this, expressed like this, and I will do it this way. It's a bit tailor-made, right? Is it just for the sake of swearing? Another thing I'm curious about is that every time you publish a work, you will definitely do it. Why did you choose to develop in Taiwan ? In fact, I didn’t say that I must come to Taiwan because I spend most of my time in Taiwan. When I publish my works, they are all on the Internet. You said that there may be some press releases for publicity. You saw the press releases from Taiwan because We have more cooperation with the media here, so for me, where to publish is only here in Taiwan . Of course, if you want to perform on stage or register for an award, the control of freedom of speech in Taiwan is relatively loose. You can imagine people like me. I can't play many songs in many countries like Singapore. I can't play many songs in Singapore. Isn't it okay in Singapore? There are some songs that can't be played in "Heart of Glass". They love playing it , but they just can't play some songs. In Malaysia, many songs can't be played. I said that the mainstream media will not broadcast it because they are afraid of being scolded. I have recently interviewed many people related to Malaysia, such as director Zhang Ji'an before, and I realized that we actually have no control over whether it can be broadcast or not. The space is very big, very big, and for us, it is at most restricted. For example, the previous one said it is restricted, but you can still click in and listen to it as usual . The radio stations here dare to play some DJs, and they want to play some dirty words about me. When the song was played, I said it was okay. He said it was okay and he played it. Indeed, I think Taiwan really doesn’t have any restrictions on swearing. At most, we can only reach the protection level and there are some pornographic content or some critical content. Most countries that have a little bit of political overtones cannot broadcast it . We particularly like political undertones and we are very accepting of everyone’s traffic. Pick it up. Why did you come to Taiwan to study in the first place ? In fact , the main reason why I came to Taiwan to study abroad was that it was cheap . It was because we should When we talk about national high school, we call it an independent high school, but the government ignores it . So after you finish the diploma, the government doesn’t recognize it. Is there any way to connect it to a university in Malaysia? It’s because Taiwan recognizes what I call an independent high school. Taiwan is the cheapest diploma among the countries we recognize . Another advantage of Taiwan is that foreigners can come to work. Because my family was not very rich at that time, I thought I would tell my parents, let me go there first. While thinking about it , I went to find a job to lighten the burden on my family. Not every country allows foreign students to come and work, but Taiwan is OK . It’s cheap and allows you to work , and it also allows me to publish my works here, so I decided to I think (decided) to study in Taiwan But I would like to ask, was it an option to study abroad in China at that time ? Well, the wages there were so low that no one wanted to go there. So all in all, Taiwan was the best choice at that time. It was the best choice. Did the experience of studying in Taiwan have any impact on you? Or is it okay? The impact is on your works. I don’t know if you have noticed that many creative people in Malaysia should say that many singers in Taiwan are musicians and creative people who sang Malaysian works. Their works are very conservative , but they are still used. When I was creating, I thought, should I really do this? But when I came to Taiwan, I discovered many underground bands or some rappers. I thought how could these works be allowed? When I performed on stage, I thought it could be done this way. I think the biggest influence Taiwan has had on me is that you don’t have to worry about it so much and just do it. Because if you were in other countries, you would think that these songs can be performed on the stage, but you wouldn’t dare to do them. For example, which songs were very impactful to you at that time? At that time, when MC HotDog was a big band, what was very impactful to me was the Zhuoshuixi band Zhuoshuixi. I know a lot of Underground bands from the Zhuoshuixi band. They are all very brave and I have attended a Tibetan free concert in Taipei before . They took off their pants halfway through the song and then jumped out and danced there. This made me wonder why the police did not come to arrest them . In fact, you may be caught, but you are more free to express your thoughts. I have a question because from my own observation, I feel that the entire Chinese music market has shifted significantly to China in the past 20 years or so. In response to the changes in the market, have you made any adjustments in response to this change ? Once when I was writing a script, my former agent told me that if you want to write some Chinese elements, go to China. Then the whole script was changed to be filmed in China, so it became a story for me . I wanted to shoot a local story. Can you imagine? You wanted to shoot a local Taiwanese drama and then it was very local and spoke some Hokkien dialect. Then suddenly people said this The script is great. Can you change it to go to China? When we go to Beijing to shoot, it will feel like we are being deprived of our subjectivity, right? And it means that the root of the creation is gone. I didn’t create it for there. How should I do it? It was moved there , yes, you just tell him , because my story is in a rice field in Taiwan, maybe somewhere in Changhua, and I want to shoot there . He said it doesn't matter, let's change the whole thing to China , and then change it to China so that it doesn't matter. How to create , so I was very upset at that time. I was wondering how to change this thing . And some songs may have some Hokkien parts. My songs have various languages in them , and they said that this song is very successful and nice. Can you change it to It's in Mandarin. Then go to China. Let me give you an example. I don't know if you have heard of the song "I Ask the Sky". I Wentian is the Mandarin version. Have you heard it? I haven't heard it . It's only played in mainland China. You go ( Listen) You will be dumbfounded. In fact, it is a translation. I think it is a kind of translation . And the song "Smoking One by One" was changed into Mandarin . I have heard the Mandarin version - Have you heard the Mandarin version? - Yes. You will be very dumbfounded (how can I resist if I don't drink well) ? It really feels a bit like a Japanese song being translated into a Chinese song. You will feel that the melody is so familiar and weird . It is not only if your group If the name or your stage name is in English, it will ask you to change it to Chinese . For example, Twins , they call twins in China and invite twins like this. Do you know what it is ? But I am very curious why even the name must be changed to - so emphasized. Like this - I think it may be for reading comprehension or something, but they don't even require brackets for any English words, and the road names are changed to Chinese Pinyin. If you don't understand Chinese, you have no way to understand what it is saying. So for you, such a change is something you cannot accept. It has lost the soul of the work. I have no way to do it . I have tried , but it requires these things all day long. It is very - there is no way to do it. It is not in line with your own aesthetics , and it will even want to cooperate with it. It will tell you that you have to sign a contract and you should go to the external network. Their so-called external network is Facebook IG . Your comments and your expressions on IG must be controlled otherwise. How much compensation do you have to pay? You will be afraid after reading it, you know ? It’s just that you can’t cooperate with such a place. I have seen this kind of contract and I think it is super fierce, but I can understand it because for them, if this work is good Someone in the middle made this mistake . They wanted the entire work to be magically modified or cut off. But I am very curious. Is the price really high enough? I think it is high. I think it is. It's high enough. I don't know what the other ones are. I'm very curious because as I just said , everyone is actually making money from China in an era. How could you want to release the song "Glass Heart" and then be banned after releasing it? I mean, does it have a big impact on you? If you talk about the song "Heart of Glass", because I have said it is a love song to the outside world, but the content of it is a love song inside , do you think it has a big impact? I think it's okay. In fact, it’s not blocked , it’s just banned from the Internet. At that time, when you asked me to cooperate with them, we couldn’t discuss many things. At that time, many works circulated on their Internet were pirated . At that time, piracy was quite serious . So we found some Chinese lawyers to help us catch these pirated downloads. It was a bit like asking YouTube to help us file a claim. Those who were right about the things on Bilibili went to help us with the claim , but it was half the result with half the effort and we could never find anyone. You don’t know who is pirated , and some accounts have very bad sound quality of my songs , which are then pirated and listened to by many people. It’s a bit uncomfortable for us because our music is half-dead and then remixed. It was perfect and then it was stolen, you know? Then I kept calling a lawyer to deal with the result. At that time, after "Heart of Glass" was released, it was banned directly and all the songs were pulled . It didn't need to be done . It seemed to be an unexpected gain , otherwise we Caught half to death, it only takes one action to take it all down. This problem exists in many fields. I find it very interesting because they basically don’t pay attention to your intellectual property. Their understanding is actually different from here. They will even say that I have to pay others to help me pirate. They will think that it is a great thing to say that I help you pirate and spread it for you. They will think so , but for us, this is our intellectual property and this is mine. My copyright belongs to my work. It’s my thing. You can’t rob it randomly . But they don’t think so. And after you rob it, you make it ugly and make everyone suffer. Every time you release a work, the traffic is very high. Then you Did you expect such a result before launching your work ? Or do you think from your point of view why your work has such a high market acceptance? I dare not say that the traffic of all my works is very high , because some music things... It is resonance , so if you resonate with people, you will like certain music. Some of my songs have broad themes, and the acceptance will be relatively large. Those with narrow themes , or those that are recognized by a small number of people, will have relatively low acceptance. So not every one of my songs is popular. If the public accepts it, I think it may have something to do with my songs. The songs have something to do with the genre. I usually sing my lyrics or content, which may be a bit strange or targeted. The reason why my songs must be popular is because most of the songs I listened to before were pop songs that are more critical or targeted at a relatively niche audience, but no matter how you create them, they are good. When conveying something to more people , you should choose a form that is easy to spread. A way that is easier to spread , easier to listen to , and easier to hum, let everyone hear it. I think this is the first thing to do, otherwise you have No matter how great the idea is, people haven't heard it. It's a bit like you have a great idea that you want to express , but you use classical Chinese to write it , and then this classic masterpiece becomes a very niche one . You won't be able to convey it , and I think it's very important to follow the music , because sometimes people may not remember the lyrics , but at least the song will be a good one because it is just musical notes and it is cross-cultural and cross-lingual . Talk about a brainwashing song or a song that will get you hooked or brainwashed as soon as you listen to it. This method is to let everyone listen to your song first before paying attention to what you are singing . My songs are basically pop songs and I I feel that those themes are actually very important factors that can add up , because every time when I read the lyrics of Huang Mingzhi’s songs, I feel that he is really paying attention to the issues around him, so that he is able to put them into practice. The topic is written in such a way that people who pay attention to that topic can feel empathy and resonance. What are the main topics of this new album? This new one hasn’t been sent to you yet . Thank you. This is "Weenomenon". My new album is from The English name Phenomenon is a phenomenon. At that time, after I wrote "Heart of Glass", some people discussed on the Internet that some of the contents of my works were relatively bold in various aspects . When we were making works in the past, they were criticized by the mainstream media. There are restrictions because there are laws or mainstream media that cannot broadcast something and that cannot be talked about. In the Internet era, many things can be talked about , but later it seems that it cannot be talked about because there will be yellow marks and some will even be red marks. I may even be kidnapped by others' morals. I think many things on the Internet will lead to trends, which will cause some of us to be morally kidnapped and unable to express our own thoughts. But for me, art, music or any kind of speech are good. I think they are all free , but we still have to be brave. To express my own opinions like this, so this is from Phenomenon, which became the album "Weenomenon". It is a bit like the Huang Mingzhi phenomenon, and it means a little bit like this . But there is another point that I am curious about that is not in the interview. I think Taiwan now has More YouTubers are really afraid of moral kidnapping. It may not be directly stipulated by the law. It does not mean that someone will ban your video . But the so-called trend or moral kidnapping mentioned just now will make many Have you ever encountered a similar situation when people don’t want to speak out anymore ? At that time, I wanted to publish a lot of my works. I wrote more than 300 songs and wanted to come to Taiwan to show off my talents , but there was no way to publish them. No one wanted to follow me. Then I went to record companies to collaborate , but no one wanted to buy my songs. At that time, there was YouTube. I saw this website and said that no one was using it. I said, I might as well just put some unsellable works that will definitely not be sold to anyone. If you can buy works , put them on YouTube. Taurus is better at calculating the ones that are likely to be sold and then keeping them. If the ones that cannot be sold are heard, and someone comes to me to buy songs, I can put the ones that can be sold. When the song came out (unexpectedly), it established the image of a singer with swear words , but in fact it was not like that. Only less than 5% of the songs contained such swear words, so at that time, it was bombarded and said that you are vulgar and disgraceful to Malaysians. People from my hometown are ashamed of our hometown. My surname is Huang, so I said you are embarrassing our surname Huang. You are also said to be very vulgar and disrespectful to women. I have been scolded until now. People will not believe me no matter what I say. I said that actually 95% of my songs have no swear words. Believe it or not, no one believes it. So he has carried this original sin from the beginning. To this day, some people still introduce him as a singer with foul language . To this day, he is used to it. Your international arrest warrant was lifted the year before last. Does this mean that Malaysia's society is relatively open? It is very open . We are now fourth in Asia and the first is freedom of the press . Taiwan is second, South Korea is third, Japan is fourth, Malaysia is fourth, and Mongolia is fifth . I just saw a piece of data yesterday. For Taiwan, the first place may be ordinary, but for Malaysia, we are fourth. We may have improved 30 places (total world rankings). You know, it feels like we have jumped in a short time. After ranking 30 times, do you think the changes in Malaysia are related to the collision of your works? I dare not say this , but at that time, no one dared to speak. At that time, when I was creating , but later slowly the Internet There are voices on the road, and we are slowly moving towards freedom like this. Now, Malaysia has actually gone from the freedom of speech you just mentioned to the fourth place now. What do you think is the most critical factor ? The change of government , the rotation of political parties, is the most critical change. I have been targeted and arrested a few times because there has been no change since our independence in 60 years. There has been no change of government in the past few years . So you are referring to the time when the Pakatan Harapan came to power. It already had that feeling when it first came to power. It was you. You can start freedom of speech because they are the opposition party in power and you start to feel that you can speak out. However, there are still some disturbances , some small ones , and then it becomes more and more you can do whatever you want. Now basically no one is taking care of this matter unless If you go too far , for example, if you slander or make some untrue remarks, of course they can still sue you because what you said is wrong. And if what you say is just criticizing the government and scolding me, I think it is completely fine. We just talked about it. There are many freedoms. I am very curious about what the ideal free society in your mind would look like. My freedom is actually quite similar to the freedom defined in Taiwan , because it may be a problem in our industry. Speech, creation and publishing are related to these three . It’s almost the same in my mind because I rely on these three things to do things, right? In fact, that’s enough. Do you want more nudity? Nude freedom. So for you , Taiwan is actually what a free society in your mind looks like . Ah, I think a lot of people who grew up in Taiwan don't feel that way. They think it's what it should be. You know, you can't go to most countries in Asia . I believe that I think there are some things here that are more free than in the United States. Really, you talk about race . It’s true that the police over there beat people randomly because you can tell by looking at the behavior of the police. You are in Taiwan and you have seen the way the police handle things. You may be accustomed to it by Taiwanese people , but we foreigners think your police are so polite. Why are they already so polite? The fight started over there. Are you still there? Don't you want me? I thought about the 7-11 before and the clerk ran out and said don't take pictures. I just thought of the same scene . Finally, is there anything you want to tell us Zhiqi Qi? Seven viewers share my album. I have been working on this album for a year . It should be said that I release an album every year , but I know this is difficult for many singers. An album is different from a single, so you It takes a while to make an album every year. In addition, in this era, few people will buy albums. So I hope everyone will support my new album. Why do I still want to release an album ? If no one buys it, I think I should. Just keep at it , that is, let it be like this every year. I think it is an obsession, so I must release a physical album. It will be released in the era when no one wants to buy it. I have always said that maybe it will not be available next year. It is like this every year. It feels like there are really very few of these entities. Some countries don’t seem to have them at all, so it’s a sunset industry. The sunset industry reminds me that I haven’t been to a record store for a while , and when I buy, it seems that I always have this in mind. I want to keep it as a decoration , and then I will buy one. If there is a package with photos in it, boys will buy it . It’s the feeling of listening to the album. It’s like this. It’s the same feeling as before. Now it’s all on the Internet. They will read the lyrics. Then I slowly started trying to figure out what it was about. I feel like fewer people nowadays experience the feeling that when we were kids, we had to follow the order of the album, read the lyrics from the first song , and then slowly listen to the last song, and just follow it. The feeling of entering its story is gone now. Now it’s for singles. Now you just press the highest number of plays and then go directly to the next one one by one and press random to listen. Because when we are making these records, you don’t just have to say the order, it has some The pauses also need to be considered. After our song is finished, we have to pause for 5 seconds to buffer it, so the end of the song may need to be extended by 5 seconds. That's what you used to listen to on the cassette. It's like this. Yes, yes, you have to think about that emotion. You can’t go to the next one so quickly. You have to switch to 5 seconds first and then the end of the next song may be 10 seconds. For some good songs, you feel that the connection is very good. In the past, you would have had that time to turn to the back. Let's go and see who produced this. Yes, who played the guitar. Yes, yes. I don't care about these things now. It's really hard to remember them. I asked them who wrote "Subject Three". No one knows. No one knows. Do you care if you think this is a bit helpless? As a songwriter, of course I feel miserable . That song is so popular. Who wrote it? I don’t know who sang it. I don’t know who is remixing it now . I don’t know how to dance it. I just know how to dance . Today we are very grateful to Mingzhi for sharing this wonderful episode. Let’s go here first.
