The album's (Shangri-La's) conception started with the following premises:
Though Chinese presence grows in the global community, the world’s understanding of Chinese people, pop culture and music still lags behind. As much as we hate to admit it, we are still faced with age-old stereotypes and unjust prejudices that need addressing.
Chinese pop music does not have a strong enough sonic identity. Instead of being purely karaoke driven, instead of covering or imitating other countries' popular songs, we can focus on developing our own sound, drawing from the rich resources that abound in Chinese culture.
Then, I coined the term chinked-out. Derived from the historically derogatory racial slur chink, used to out-down Chinese people, chinked-out repossesses the word, turns its negative connotations upside-down, and uses them as material to fuel the new sound of this music. The term describes an effort to create a sound that is international, and at the same time, Chinese. In this album, I decided to implement some of China's most precious and untapped resources, the musics of its shao shu min zu, or ethnic minorities, concentrating on the regions of Yunnan, Shangri-La, Tibet, Xinjiang and Mongolia. This is NOT one of those world music CDs. It's an R&B/hip-hop album that creates a new vibe the whole world can identify as being Chinese.
華人嬉哈
這張專輯的概念是始自幾個前提：
雖然華人已在全球經濟展露頭角，但世界對華人還有其流行文化、音樂的了解還是遠遠落後。我們不想 承認，但是目前還是得面臨別人多年來的刻板印象和不公平的成見，這些都是需要釐清的。
華語流行音樂並沒有一個夠強烈的聽覺身分，除了創作卡拉OK曲、除了翻唱或模仿其他國家的流行歌曲外 ，我們可以把焦點放在發展我們自己的聲音，試著從中華文化的豐富資源中去探求。
於是，我創了一個新名詞「中式嬉哈（chinked-out）」。這是源自chink（譯註：原意為中國佬、 清奴）─ 一個長久以來被援用來輕視華人的字眼，但chinked-out重新定位了原本的詞，完全轉化 其原有的負面涵義，新名詞使用這些內涵作為激發音樂新聲音的材料，用以形容我們努力創造很國際、同 時很華人的新聽覺。在這張專輯裡，我注入一些中國最珍貴而尚未被拿來運用的資源，比方說少數民族的 音樂，尤其是雲南、香格里拉、西藏、新疆和蒙古等地區。然而，這「不是」張世界音樂專輯，它仍是 R&B/嬉哈音樂、一張創造了全世界可定位為華人音樂的新作品。
Information provided by the courtesy of Homboy Music Studios, Inc.
Special thanks to Claudia for translating this into Chinese