One area in China that was notable for this assertion of identity was in Hong Kong, where regional dialect helped facilitate the growth of rap music and was essential in many Hong Kong rappers’ music. At first, the music scene was heavily dominated by Cantonese pop (or Cantopop for short) during the mid-1970s. However, as big companies and industries took over more control of Cantopop, its lyrical content began to change, and thus Cantopop started to become slowly unrelatable to the common mass. This allowed for the Cantonese Hip Hop music scene, with groups like LMF (LazyMuthaFuckaz) to rise in the place of Cantopop because the lyrics portrayed the realities of the everyday working-class youth. As the scene continued to grow, rap groups like Fama came into light and portrayed a different voice of the people, one that was more akin to, as Lin describes it, that of “middle-class bilingual college boys.” Between all the different Hip Hop groups, different ways of speaking and rapping represented the various hierarchies in society through the wide ranges of formal speech (or lack of, in most cases), use of different languages, and lyrical content and themes. 

In particular, however, one form of speech stood out. In Hong Kong, a form of vulgar speech known as chou-hau existed that was often used by working class youth. Mainly used by both working class people and triad members, chou-hau was often seen as taboo in middle class society for its transgressive and defiant nature. As a result, when hip-hop came into visibility in Hong Kong during the mid-1990’s, chou-hau meshed very well with hip-hop’s rebellious and assertive nature, and rappers used chou-hau in rap music to express young people’s anger and discontent towards society and government, a pattern similarly seen in both the African-American and Japanese communities (Lin, 2008).

Source:

Lin, A. (2008). "Respect for da chopstick hip hop": The politics, poetics, and pedagogy of cantonese verbal art in hong kong. In H. S. Alim, A. Ibrahim, & A. Pennycook (Eds.), Global linguistic flows: Hip hop cultures, youth identities, and the politics of language (159-177). New York, NY: Routledge.