impressive... self made man?

With growing confidence, he began to rethink his public image. As his contract with EEG was ending, Chen approached the company and asked to produce his next album. "They creatively held everything, which was really frustrating to me because I would have to do a lot of things that I was not accustomed to doing," he says. "It was an uphill battle."

He eventually secured the money to do "Please Steal This Album." It was a transitional record, more soft pop than hip-hop. But it went gold, and Chen says, "I guess that burned a lot of bridges."

In 2004, on his own in a company town, Chen decided to reinvent himself in the mold of one of his heroes, Jay-Z, whose rap career broke the year Chen was in New York. He was especially impressed at how Jay-Z had parlayed rap success into fashion and lifestyle branding. Chen traveled to Japan to visit the Harajuku area, the vibrant, style-conscious home of East Asia's new lifestyle economy, and picked up a powerful mentor in the scene's godfather, Hiroshi Fujiwara.

When Chen returned to Hong Kong, he read Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point." Taken with the thought that he could help change the way an entire country thought of itself, he joined with friends Kevin Poon and Billy Ip to form Clot, potentially China's answer to elite Japanese brands like Visvim and A Bathing Ape. They started designing T-shirts and selling them from Juice's second-floor walkup.

Nike eventually commissioned Chen and a friend of his, the rapper MC Yan, to design a model of Air Max shoes. The orange-and-tan Chinese-themed result, called the Clot Kiss of Deaths, became a small sensation in the hermetic world of sneaker-obsessives (released in May, they now go for more than $200 on eBay), and led to contracts to redesign Levi's jeans and Pepsi cans. Chen was again in the right place at the right time. Clot expanded into a complex for his new businesses, including shoe and clothing design, Juice's retail outlets, his record company, an event-planning concern and a marketing consultancy for multinationals trying to gain a toehold in the new China.

"Ten years ago I'd be wearing Phat Farm and Enyce, and people would say, 'They're so baggy! But nowadays the same people that would say that are like, 'Yo, hook me up with those Clot Jeans.' "

Chen thinks the rapid growth of Chinese youth street culture is similar to hip-hop's mid-'90s mainstream breakthrough in the United States. "Just last week I went to Hangzhou, which is a small Chinese town, and 1,500 kids packed the club, wanted to come see what we were doing," he says. "I think it's the beginning of it right now."

China's rampant piracy has created a problem for companies like Nike and Levi's. Not only does bootlegging hit the companies financially, it diminishes brand value. Clot resolves the problem by offering its target audience -- young, affluent, mostly Chinese consumers -- limited-edition goods that offer mystery and create loyalty.

"We try to create stuff for our people, meaning we make it for Chinese people, and the messages are for the Chinese community. I think this is the way to start getting it deep into the roots of our people, where they can really understand what is going on," he says. "We're trying to make it localized so that they're not saying, 'Oh yeah, this is what's hot in America.' We're trying to make it so that this is what's hot in China."

In an odd way, Chen returns to North America with a backstory that encapsulates the new China's image of itself, embracing a new world of consumer-goods, adeptly future-oriented in its decision-making, formerly belittled but now respected.

Although Chen's rap skills won't put any fear into Chinese American rappers Jin and Chan, not to mention Jay-Z, he's done mix-tape cameos with Lupe Fiasco and Clinton Sparks. Chen's forthcoming, hip-hop-oriented Mandarin-language album, "Allow Me to Reintroduce Myself," is already impressive as an act of brand leveraging. Not only will it feature songs from big-name producers Just Blaze and Jazze Pha, it will be supported by Clot-crafted campaigns with Nokia, Lacoste, Levi's, Nike and Pepsi.

When Chen's contract with EEG came up in 2005, another intensive courting period began. Hollywood's biggest agencies -- CAA, the Firm, Schiff and Co. -- came to Hong Kong to woo Chen. He decided to go with Schiff and Co. because its clients, including Gwen Stefani, Pharrell Williams and Justin Timberlake, have interests not just in music but also in film and fashion.

also his blog is funny: here