O.G.: Krush was once sent his friend's fingertip in the mail. Photo: Robert Foyle Hunwick

By Robert Foyle Hunwick

DJ Krush doesn't speak English, and he doesn't speak Japanese either. "I speak music," he explained, via two interpreters required to make our conversation possible. "Music is an international language of the heart," he explained.

Black-and-white posters all over Beijing may depict him as a hoodie-wearing bad guy, but in person, DJ Krush (or Hideaki Ishi, as his mother still insists on calling him) is an allround nice guy, and thoughtful musician who takes his work so seriously that he is said to have threatened himself with hari-kiri should he ever fail succeed in the music business.

In the best sense possible, Krush is a failed gangster. He used to "run around, hanging on street corners" but he described his 1979 viewing of the seminal hip-hop movie Wild Style as his "wake-up call." First, to the derision of his fellow thugs, he started matching Adidas tracksuit bottoms with Mafioso suit jackets. Having heard Karl Lagerfeld had taken out a contract on him, he pulled out of both the fashion and the criminal underworlds and took up music full-time. Now he's a legend among serious hip-hop heads, and has collaborated with all the big names; with deserved pride, he played his DJ Shadow collaboration Duality to Yugong Yishan on Saturday night.

And they adored him. Yugong was sold out when I arrived. An angry swell of ticket-waving people in line was having serious words with impassive security sta. as Krush finally began his set around 11 pm. They were a disparate lot inside: Chinese hip-hop heads, clad head-to-toe in what looks like brand-new branded clobber; a whole bunch of chin-strokers watching Krush (who was but 20 feet away) on a projector screen manically pressing buttons and flips dials; and of course, that fat guy who wears sunglasses indoors and dances around with what appears to be a Qing Dynasty fan—he was there too.

But despite the eclectic mix of people, there was a frightening amount of love in the house. It wasn't not like any hip-hop gig I've ever been to; no one got capped, no one even got dissed. A seven-foot giant, encrusted with jewelry, actually apologized for bumping into me. "Hip hop has moved in many directions since Wildstyle came out," Krush mused when I asked him about the gangsta rap that dominates hip-hop culture.

He wants no part of that, nor commercially motivated factory rap churned out by the likes of Master P and Pu. Daddy. Unlike them, he actually did used to be a gangster and rolled with the Yakuza before someone sent him his friend's fingertip. He got the message: "It was a conscious decision to separate myself from that and concentrate on my love of music."

Krush's new album is due to be released in 2010. His manager spoke of coming back to Beijing within the year for a promotional tour, but on Saturday as he closed his set with a crowd-pleasing encore that mixed "Smoke on the Water" with "Billie Jean." It's safe to assume he'll be welcomed back with open hearts.