Two-for-one tickets will be available to "humans accompanied by a single puppet," according to show organizers. Photo: Courtesy of www.puppetmastaz.com

By Hao Ying

This Friday a crew of hardcore hip-hop animal puppets hits Yugong Yishan, bringing not only a love of 24-carat bling but a message of puppet liberation.

The Puppetmastaz could be considered an unholy cross between Weird Al Yankovic and the Gorillaz, with lead rapper Wizard the Lizard boasting in one of their videos: "Yeah, me a frog Prince Charming your pants off / You know it's a crime against nature but you just can't stop."

The collective of more than 30 freestyling puppets formed in Berlin in 1996, recently broke up, but is reuniting for a tour of China partly organized by Helen Feng of Pet Conspiracy and Free the Birds fame.

"They are friends of ours in Berlin. We thought they were absolutely hilarious," she explains. "We took an opportunity to bring them over for the Zebra Festival," which branches out from Chengdu to hold an event in Hangzhou this weekend.

"We managed to somehow talk these people into bringing the puppets into China," she says, referring to the satirical pro-puppet activism that underpins the current act of the Puppetmastaz.

"Puppets were once at the top of society," Feng explains, recalling the heyday of the Muppet Show and the 1983 Sesame Street special Big Bird in China. "Now they're at the bottom."

The Puppetmastaz rapped a lot about equality for puppets in their 2002 debut release Humans Get All The Credit, Feng says, but following success their heads got big and they became bogged down in fame, groupies, drugs and eventually broke up. But now the Puppetmastaz are back and socially aware, with the rallying cry: "Bring your own puppet! Join the Movement!"

The beat-down looking puppets rap in all styles, spoofing everything from Snoop Dogg to Sean Paul. For example, Buggles the Chicken warns: "So take a listen to this bird's wrath, as I take a piss in your bird bath / Got my droppings on this track, the last of Hitchcock's bird cast."

Squidrock warns off aggressive divers by saying: "No more visual after the attack of the giant squid, walk away with giant quid pro quo, its the pro-squid flow / Everybody living on the own death row, or so I say, don't poke your nose into the business of another invertebrate, unless you uninvertedly care to talk business, and actually have a word to say."

The Puppetmastaz have branched out into different media, with their own blog ("Puppetry Fair: The Glossy Gossip Gazette") and their own videogame "Rescue the Puppets," available on their MySpace page. Feng has hinted a collaboration called "Puppet Conspiracy" that might make an appearance at the Yugong Yishan show.

Videos of the Puppetmastaz performances on Youku show puppets bouncing in the audience along with audience members, something the rappers want to encourage by offering two-for-one tickets for humans if they are accompanied by a single puppet.

"Puppets sometimes have human girlfriends. We don't want to look down on that," Feng says, explaining the group's policy. She added that the band hopes to see Chinese puppets in the audience during their show, but said the group was wholly dismissive of shadow puppets, calling them "two-dimensional."