MCs get inspiration from anything and everything. When they are walking down the street, they can see a beautiful woman and soon, a hit song is written. Sometimes they could feel threatened in a dimly-lit alley and an introspective verse comes to them. A sunrise could open the mind to writing bars about the beauty in the world.

Last year, Taiwan’s MC HotDog was struggling while searching for inspiration while being in quarantine during COVID-19. He found an email from 2004 that had some manga in it from famous Taiwanese artist, Zhu Deyong, and began to write. Soon, he was inspired and had a song called ‘The Tenants Downstairs’ about jumping off a building. The problem was that a lot of the song was copied from Zhu’s work, Nothing New Happening.

Fast forward to this year when the song came out, HotDog was informed of this plagiarization. He went on to thank Zhu for his inspiration for the song and dedicated it to him. Zhu didn’t find this situation acceptable and did not authorize the use of his words, “The practice of getting on the bus first and then paying the fare later does not align with my authorization process.”

MC HotDog took the song down off streaming services and shelved the video that had already been filmed for the song. He said, "Everyone in our company, including myself, has committed a very low-level and serious error."

MC HotDog’s apology is below.