Kung Faux is an international action comedy television series and audiovisual art assemblage created by Mic Neumann, an American creator–developer showrunner, conceptual artist and multimedia entrepreneur, who remixes classic kung fu films with popular music and comic book style editing along with video game style visual effects and new storylines featuring voice acting by contemporary art stars, hip hop personalities, and pop culture icons.
The series incorporates creative elements from classic video games and comic book culture–namely, with superimposed text and supernatural embellishments, edited in a cut-and-paste style reminiscent of hip-hop production techniques, creating coherent audiovisual samples that together tell a cohesive story using overlaid video transitions that add thrilling punctuation to the densely layered musical soundtrack and inspired voice-over dubbing loaded with regional slang and cultural references.
[8] Kung Faux first appeared publicly as a narrative collection of video art film stills derived from the series that exhibited at the original Ace Hotel alongside the works of such artists as Kaws and Shepard Fairey in 1999, while short video clips from the series also streamed on the websites Popdetail.com, Dubtitled.com and Heavy.com as video treatments for a larger proposed sequential art project and feature length film version of the Kung Faux concept, before then repurposing its comprehensive remix formula in 2001 to transform Kung Faux into an episodic format for television that first aired in 2003 as part of the inaugural launch of the Fuse music television channel in the United States, formerly known as MuchMusic USA, and a subsidiary of Rainbow Media's AMC Networks.
From there, Mic Neumann continued to repurpose, revision, remix and transform Kung Faux into a distinctive audiovisual artwork and brand that has evolved through various forms and channels to over 150+ countries worldwide.
[14] Kung Faux series soundtrack music and voice acting roles were performed by such artists as De La Soul, Guru, Masta Ace, Queen Latifah,[1] Biz Markie, Afrika Bambaataa, Eminem, Kaws, Eli Janney, Craig Wedren, Steve Powers, Aida Ruilova, Mark Ronson, Helena Christensen, Crazy Legs, Willi Ninja, Information Society, Elephant Man, Jean Grae, Mr. Len, Lord Sear, Roc Raida, Sadat X, Indo G, Ron Van Clief, Harold Hunter, Dimitri from Paris, Above The Law, MF Doom, Quasimoto, Mix Master Mike, Beastie Boys, Petter, Scribe, P-Money, Curse, Gentleman, Assassin, Fannypack, Grooverider, Stetsasonic, Force MDs, and Naughty by Nature.
[16] The Oklahoma Daily proclaimed the Kung Faux television series to be "a solid piece of pop culture phenomena" and the debut of the first DVD release to be "a work of art".
[35] In 2013, Kung Faux in commemoration of its ten-year anniversary debut, released a limited edition promotional mixtape featuring ten of the most prominently used Tommy Boy Records songs from the original series soundtrack.