The camera rolls as Kev Nish, standing behind a kitchen table piled with raw vegetables, lifts up a plate lined with hot dogs.

“I got a special ingredient for you guys,” he announces, suggestively showcasing the thawed franks. “All my ladies, you know what these are.”

As hosts of the live online cooking show “Eating FM,” he, J-Splif and DJ Virman exchange banter on topics such as “stank-ass breath,” popping cherry tomatoes and Michael Vick, all while tossing together the evening’s culinary creation: an Asian-inspired salad.    

Wearing a purple varsity jacket and a cap tilted sideways, Kev Nish speaks to the viewers at home: “We’re just here having a good time — not washing our hands, picking our noses, touching the food. Oh yeah, we gotta make the dressing.”

Gone are the days when all music artists had to do was make music. Just ask Far*East Movement, a Los Angeles hip-hop group made up of emcees Kev Nish (Kevin Nishimura), Prohgress (James Roh), J-Splif (Jae Choung) and DJ Virman. With filming taking place at manager Carl Choi’s condo, the low-budget Internet production is one of many marketing avenues these talented 20-somethings are taking to invade a music genre that rarely sees faces like theirs.

It seems their efforts are paying off. This fall, their single “You’ve Got A Friend,” featuring artists Baby Bash and Lil Rob, cracked the listener-voted “Top 8@8” countdown on L.A. megastation Power 106 and now sits alongside hits by hip-hop kings such as Akon, Kanye West and Jay-Z. While the chefs ham it up for the camera, Carl, sitting with a laptop just a few feet from the scene, types the words “GO VOTE! GO VOTE! GO VOTE!” into the show’s live chat room, reminding fans to keep the song on the airwaves through online and text message votes. 

A D.I.Y. mentality has been a steady component for a few guys who used to practice by downloading beats off of Napster and rapping into a computer microphone.

Influenced by artists like N.W.A. and Tupac, Kevin, James and Jae, three childhood friends fresh out of high school, would meet up at each other’s houses and take turns spitting out lyrics.

“For me, it was like therapy,” says James. “I would listen to a beat, and I could just flow it off and just speak about my struggles.”

Their pastime grew into a passion as they began performing in parking lots for anyone who would listen. They called themselves eMCees Anonymous.

But for the Asian American artists (Kevin is Chinese and Japanese, James and Jae are Korean), the name never felt right.

“We had this big complex,” says Kevin. “We were, like, people can’t know we’re Asian because the second they know, they’re gonna hate us. But then we were, like, eMCees Anonymous is weak sauce. It was like, we can’t own up to who we are? So we were, like, f-ck that.”