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Rap music has long been considered a f orm of resistance ag ainst authoriyt . Boosted by the commercialization of the music industyr and transf ormation broug ht about by the Internet, that messag e has p roven its app eal to y outh all around the world. Now f rom Shang hai to Nairobi to S o Paolo, hip -hop is evolving into a truyl g lobal art of communication. |By J eff Chang nside the steaming walls of a night lub in This annual rap battle, alled the Iron Mi , isn’t the heart of one of the world’s most dynam- taking pla e in New York or Los Angeles, but in i ities, you an hear the sounds of the Shanghai, where its founder, 32-year-old Dana Burton, I future. Hundreds of people gyrate rhyth- has unexpe tedly found fame and fortune. The Detroit mi ally as a DJ spins hot beats. Up on a stage, a pair native arrived in China in 1999 to take a job tea hing of rappers fa e off, mi rophones in hand, trading English. During his first week in town, he went to a verses of improvised rhyme. They look like typi al night lub that advertised hip-hop musi . But the los- hip-hop artists, dressed in baggy pants and baseball est thing to hip-hop was a Mi hael Ja kson imper- aps. But listen losely and you noti e something sonator. So Burton embarked on a mission to bring the unusual: They’re performing in Chinese. One rap- real thing to the Middle Kingdom. “I thought about per spits out words in a distin tive Beijing a ent, what I ould offer China,” he says. “It was hip-hop.” s olding the other for not speaking proper Man- Burton began to moonlight as a rapper and developed