Larger-than-life Malaysian rapper, composer, actor, and filmmaker Namewee (whose stage name is a bilingual pun on his first name, the Mandarin term for name (Chinese: 名字; pinyin: míngzi) was born Huáng Míngzhì in Muar, Johor on 6 May 1983 and is equally notorious in China – where he is currently banned – and famous in his home of Taiwan. The hip-hop firebrand and singer-songwriter first hit the headlines in 2007 with his controversial remake of the Malaysian national anthem "Negaraku," newly titled as "Negarakuku" (the word kuku is similar to the word for 'penis' in Hokkien) and dropped his first self-titled EP that same year. On the strength of his subsequent releases, including a 2013 album for Warner Music Taiwan Ltd, Asia Most Wanted, and mainstream breakthrough hit "You're Not Red" (2014) – also assembling the Internet-powered group RED People that year – he was nominated for the Best Male Vocal Mandarin award at Taiwan's Golden Melody Award in 2016 and 2017. A brush with the law in August 2016 – he was arrested by police in Penang, Malaysia over allegedly insulting the dignity of Islam in his religious-themed music video for "Oh my God" – and several other contentious events followed over the next few years; he was detained and investigated in 2018 for music video "Like a Dog" and in 2020, police complaints were lodged against the alleged racism of his film Babi, with the star eventually surrendering himself to police in Kuala Lumpur on his return to Malaysia in March 2021. In October 2021, his viral Mandopop song and video with Taiwan-based Australian singer Kimberly Chen, "Fragile" – which sees him take a thinly veiled aim at Chinese president Xi Jinping and Chinese nationalists as well as touching on sensitive topics such as COVID-19 and censorship – was banned by mainland China.
