IT'S WEDNESDAY NIGHT, and a DJ is on the stage spinning records, spicing up the drummer's hip-hop beat with innovative scratching. The crowd is bopping, waiting with anticipation. Three rappers wearing street gear hit the stage.

One of them is MC Yan, perhaps the best known local rapper. Another is a newcomer called Chef. Until six months ago, the third would have been heard crooning safe Canto-ballads instead of pumping out street talk in the grey and red sweat top and baggy camouflage pants he's wearing tonight. But this isn't Edison Chen Koon-hei Canto crooner. This is Edison Chen hip-hopper.

If proof be needed that the Black American ghetto pavement music has found acceptance in Hong Kong, the sight of Chen bouncing around Kowloon Bay's HITEC stage to a packed crowd of hand-gesturing local wannabe street-smarts may be it. Tweeting Twins at the Coliseum it most certainly is not.

Chen put out his first hip-hop album, Please Steal This Album, in February, backed by MC Yan (real name Chan Kwong-yan) and Singaporean musician Hanjin Chen. Several singles from the album topped local pop charts. Its success has led to his second Canto-rap record, Hazy: The 144 Hour Project - with a heavy dose of urban music - which will be released after Christmas.

Chen, 24, has been dreaming of producing a hip-hop record since he landed a record deal with Emperor in 2000. Such are the demands and constraints of the local music industry, however, that he was duly put though the Canto-pop wringer, squeezing out half a dozen albums of low-risk profit-making songs.

'Obviously they just let me do things in a very Hong Kong and mainstream way,' Chen says. 'But after producing seven or eight albums, I finally got the chance to do hip-hop on my last one.'

It was a chance he'd been waiting for since his formative years. 'Hip-hop isn't just about music. There's a culture and history behind it. It shapes the way I talk, the way I dress, the way I think and the person I am today.'

Chen's shift to hip-hop has surprised many local fans and music critics. But his pop star status has helped introduce the music to a wider audience. 'I realised that more people are now interested in hip-hop, so now I'm doing it in my own way, at my own pace.'

In the late 1980s and early 90s, while interest in hip-hop was growing in the west thanks to the likes of the Beastie Boys and Run-D.M.C., mainstream local artists such as Alex To tried to bring black American music and Canto-rap to the local scene. However, competition from Canto-pop was too strong.

It wasn't until the late 1990s that the genre started to build impetus in Hong Kong, when hardcore rock outfit LMF injected hip-hop beats and scratching, as well as Canto-rap into their music after MC Yan and DJ Tommy (Cheung Chun-wai) joined the band. Later signed to record company Warner Music's Hong Kong alternative label DNA, the band hit it big, selling more than 60,000 copies of its self-titled album.

Warner Music's regional new media director Mark Lankester says he saw the potential for a shift in musical sentiment. 'There was an opportunity for a different sound and genre of music to appeal to music buyers and a target market that was open to other genres of music apart from Canto-pop.

'The hip-hop/R&B sound was a style that was globally acceptable and fresh,' he says, and hip-hop has been successfully taken up around the world by performers in their own languages.

Although LMF weren't a fully fledged hip-hop act, the album (coupled with their rebellious attitude) attracted a large number of followers and inspired some to try their hand at hip-hop.

Among them are Luk Wing-kun (aka 6Wing) and Cheng Sze-kwan (C-Kwan) who, in 2001, formed the first local hip-hop crew, FAMA, with vocalist Gigi Lip Pik-chi and DJ Galaxy (Cheng Chi-wah). Their debut album, Poem O'da Moon, was released the next year, and their new record, Cheng Wing-chi, is due out soon.'There are more new rappers in Hong Kong and those who have been around are getting more mature,' 21-year-old Luk says. 'We're influencing and pushing each other to do even better. We listened to LMF [when we first started]. It's no use if we just keep listening to American hip-hop - that wouldn't inspire us to pick up a pen and write our lyrics.'

Last year, the city's first and only hip-hop label, Catalyst Action, released a compilation, Hip-Hop Battle History, featuring local hip-hoppers, including Arho Sunny, MC Snake, Jerk Dan and the first local female rapper, Chan Sze-wai (aka Mizz Eva). Chan, who last month released her debut EP titled L for .... through Catalyst, adds a new flavour to the scene with her mellow style and sentimental lyrics.

Catalyst Action founder Michael Lam Chung-wai (aka Cap10) thinks crossing over with Canto-pop is the way local hip-hop should go.

'In the US, hip-hop can fuse with the mainstream,' says Lam, who is writing a book on local hip-hop history. 'The entire hip-hop scene should include pop as well as underground stuff. In Taiwan, most mainstream artists have put hip-hop in their music.'

As hip-hop weaves its way from influence to acceptance, Luk and Cheng - after signing with DJ Tommy's production house, Color Production, last year - have worked on tracks for Canto-pop artists such as Joey Yung Cho-yi, Yumiko Cheng Hei-yi, Louis Koo Tin-lok, Edison Chen and girl band Quartet.

Another local hip-hop group, Supathugz (Brandon Ho, aka Ghost Style, and Ross Szeto, aka DJ Rozzroize), have been featuring Canto-pop newcomer Ella Koon. Both rappers welcome the collaboration with mainstream acts. Recently, FAMA's new single featuring Edison Chen made it to Commercial Radio's pop chart top 20.

'It feels like we're watering plants,' says Luk. 'I've been always frightened that it's just a wave ... things come and go very quickly.'

Radio Television Hong Kong DJ Chow Kwok-fung thinks the budding local hip-hop scene is partly because of Taiwanese R&B and hip-hop performer Jay Chou. 'The emergence of Jay Chou influenced the local music culture a lot, especially the younger fans,' says Chow.

'This group of newcomers such as Edison Chen who have their own musical belief would normally find it hard to fit into the Canto-pop culture. However, they can't produce something really hardcore once they're here, by doing mix and match and blending hip-hop elements into Canto-pop,' he says.

Chow says with hip-hop particularly popular among the younger generation, the potential for its influence to grow in Hong Kong is great. 'There's still a long way to go before the market gets saturated,' he says.

DJ Tommy says hip-hop is now truly established here because its four main elements - rapping, DJ-ing, graffiti and break-dancing - are there. 'We've got representatives of the four elements,' he says. 'If there are more outstanding people emerging in the scene to keep the ball rolling, the culture will continue.'