Most Asian-American rappers try to market themselves to other Asians and that's a very small market to begin with. The reason Das Racist (Kool A.D. is cuban, Heems & Dap are Indian) were getting plays was because they catered to a white audience, the biggest audience in America. Hood rappers that make music for the hood specifically don't even get much plays on HHH and if it does it has to appeal to hipsters somehow.

A lot of people thought gangsta rap was a gimmick playing to how hollywood portrayed African Americans and even to this day it gets flak by a lot of people even though a lot of those artists were rapping about real experiences. That's how some were really living. It is a stereotype, but they found a middle ground and turned it into a positive with street poetry.

What gimmicks can Asian artists really play to? Kung-fu shit? Think how different stereotypes are portrayed in Hollywood movies because that's how you market entertainment in America unfortunately. They can play the gimmick, but they can't pull anything real out of it that would get people to say that's real because that's not really what their lifestyle is. I'm sure if there was an Asian rapper who was a big Wu-Tang fan growing up rapping about Shaolin they would get buzz like crazy, so there are ways around it though. Gimmicks are like salt, too much of it will leave a bad taste in your mouth, but if it's sprinkled on just right people will love it.

Jin's marketing team fucked up with him. He was actually good for his time, but "learn chinese" honestly sounds like the type of shit that his marketing team at his label came up with. Jin was a battle MC that never cared about making hit records with a shit marketing team, that was his downfall.