- Hip-hop has experienced a surge in popularity in China, with TV shows introducing millions of people to new stars.
- “The Rap of China” TV show played an important role in popularizing rap culture throughout the country.
- Due to government regulations the show was rebranded, making it conform to censorship guidelines but allowing hip-hop to continue.
Sensors that monitor in 2018 Chinese media Issued a directive to the country’s entertainment industry: not to include artists with tattoos and artists representing hip-hop or any other subculture.
Right after this, well-known rapper GAI missed out on participating in a popular singing competition despite a successful first appearance. Speculation ran high: fans were worried that this was the end of hip-hop in China. Some media called it a ban.
The genre had recently experienced a banner year, with a hit competition-format TV show giving rise to new stars and introducing them to a country of 1.4 billion people. Rappers accustomed to working for little money and performing in small bars became household names. The censor announcement came at the height of that frenzy. There was a silence and no rappers appeared on dozens of different shows and singing competitions on Chinese TV for months.
Philadelphia Orchestra connects America and China through music
But by the end of that year, everything was completely back on track. “Hip-hop was very popular,” says Nathanael Amar, a researcher of Chinese pop culture at the French Center for Research on Contemporary China. “They couldn’t censor the entire genre.”
Chinese rapper Boss The rapper, who had come from making music in a dilapidated apartment in an old residential community in the city, was now playing music in a stadium filled with thousands of people. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
What seemed like the end of Chinese hip-hop was just the beginning.
Roots in the western city of Chengdu
Since then, hip-hop has continued to have explosive growth in China. It’s done this by carving out a space for itself while staying away from the government’s red lines, balancing genuine creative expression with something delicious in a country with powerful censors.
Today, musicians say they look forward to the coming golden age.
The New York Philharmonic is heading to China for 5 concerts this summer
Most of the energy can be found in Chengdu, a city in China’s southwestern Sichuan region. Some of the biggest acts in China today hail from Sichuan; Wang Yitai, Higher Brothers and Wawa are some of the names who have made Chinese rap mainstream by performing in a mix of Mandarin and Sichuan dialects. While hip-hop in Chengdu began with the very heavy sounds of trap, its rise to the mainstream has meant that artists have expanded into lighter sounds, from R&B to the trending Afrobeat rhythms popularized by Beyoncé.
Although Chinese rap has been operating underground for decades in cities like Beijing, it is the Sichuan region – known internationally for its spicy cuisine, its panda reserve and the birthplace of late leader Deng Xiaoping – that has come to dominate. Has gone.
“There’s a lot of rhyme in rap. And from a young age, we were exposed to a language with a lot of rhyme. And I think we’re the origin of that,” says Mumu Jiang, who is from Sichuan and a Attended the rap concert. Recently organized in the city.
Kidway, a 25-year-old rapper from a town just outside Chengdu, says the dialect lends itself to rap because it’s softer than Mandarin Chinese and has a lot of rhyming. “Take the word ‘gang’ in English. In Sichuanese, there’s a lot of rhymes for that word ‘fang, song, zhuang,’ the rhymes already exist,” he says.
Chengdu is also welcoming to outsiders, says 24-year-old rapper Hesen Cheng, who came to the city from Hong Kong in 2021 to work on his music at the invitation of British producer Harikiri, who has helped shape the scene and work done. With Chengdu’s biggest acts.
Part of the city’s hip-hop lore centers around a group called Chengdu Rap House, or CDC, which was founded by a rapper named Boss The city has embraced rap, as its originators like Boss At Boss X’s performance in March, fans sang and cheered in Sichuanese. Even with a ban on standing spectators at all stadium performances in China, the energy was infectious.
“When I came to mainland China, they showed me more love in three or four months than I ever got in Hong Kong,” says Cheng. He got the chance to collaborate with Higher Brothers, one of the few Chinese rap groups who also have global recognition. “People here really want to see each other succeed.”
However, the cost of going mainstream means that the underground scene has disappeared. Chengdu was once known for its underground rap battles. This no longer happens, as freestyling usually includes profanity and other material that authorities deem unacceptable. Rappers say the last time there was a rap battle in the city, authorities took immediate action and shut it down. With everything digital these days, people are uploading short clips of their music on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, to get attention.
Kidway says he learned to rap by going to these battles and competing against other rappers his age. He once worked at a renovation company but left it to pursue rap full-time.
But even though rap battles are over, there are more rappers in the field than ever. It’s a good thing. “The more players there are, the more interesting it will be,” he says.
A TV show that spawned a genre
It can rarely be said that a single cultural product has given rise to an entire genre of music. But the talent competition/reality TV show “The Rap of China” has played a large role in building China’s rap industry.
The first season, which aired on the web streaming platform IQiyi, brought rap and hip-hop culture into homes across the country. According to Chinese media reports, the first season’s 12 episodes were viewed 2.5 billion times online.
In the first season, the show relied on the star power of its judges to attract viewers – Chris Wu, a Chinese Canadian singer and former member of the hit K-pop group EXO. At the time, Wu was at the peak of his fame, and his comments as a judge that season even became Internet memes. “Do you have a freestyle?” he asked a contestant deadpan in episode one – a moment that caused Internet infamy as people doubted Wu’s rap credentials.
Two winners emerged from the first season: GAI and PG One. Shortly after his win, the Internet was filled with rumors about the less-than-perfect workings of PG One’s personal life. The Communist Youth League also criticized him for the content of one of his older songs, which appeared to be about cocaine use, which violated one of the censor’s red lines.
Then there was the 2018 meeting where censors reminded TV channels who could not appear on their programs, namely anyone who represents hip-hop. PG One was aware that an attempt was being made to release new music Quickly taken down by the platforms. The platform, IQiyi, also took down the entire first season for a while.
But by the end of summer 2018, fans were excited to hear that they could expect a second season of “The Rap of China”, albeit a rebrand. The name remained the same in English, but in Chinese it indicated a new direction. The show’s name was changed from “China Has Hip-Hop” to “China Has ‘Shuochang'”, a term that also refers to traditional forms of storytelling.
Regulators allowed hip-hop to continue its development, but it had to follow the lines set by government censors. Hip-hop was now a symbol of Shuochang and youth culture; It was to avoid mention of drugs and sex. Otherwise, however, it may escalate.
“It was a breakthrough for Chinese regulators… they were really successful in getting hip-hop artists on board,” says Amar. “It’s like a contract: If you want to be popular, if you want to be on a TV show, you have to respect the red line.”
finding a chinese voice
With tight censorship on the entertainment industry and bans on mention of drugs and sex in songs, artists have reacted in two ways. Either they wholeheartedly embrace displays of patriotism and nationalism, or they avoid the topics.
Some, like GAI, have completely taken over the government to bring hip-hop into the mainstream. He won “The Rap of China” with a song called “Not Friendly”, in which, in classic hip-hop fashion, he denounced other rappers whom he did not name. “I am not friendly. I could break your pen at any moment. Tear up your charming words. … My enemies, you had better pray that you have a good end.”
Just a few years later, Gai was singing about China’s glorious history on CCTV’s Spring Festival New Year’s Gala broadcast, a tightly scripted entertainment show with comedy sketches, song and dance performances celebrating the Chinese New Year. Viewed by families.
Wearing a Tang Dynasty-inspired Tang jacket, he sings, “Five thousand years of history flows like sand. I’m proud to be born in Cathay.”
The red lines have also inspired artists to be more creative. For Chinese rap to flourish, he says, artists must find original voices. Rapper Fullai, 32, describes his music as chill rap or “bedroom music” – not in the euphemistic sense, but the kind of music you listen to while lying in bed. He says his upcoming album is about fights with his wife and ordinary things like washing utensils.
Nevertheless, Fulai says he talks a lot about sex in his songs. Chinese is a language with countless proverbs and a strong poetic tradition: “There’s nothing you can’t touch,” he says. “You just have to be smart about it.”
Click here to get the Fox News app
Developing a genuine Chinese brand of rap work in progress. Hip-hop originated in Brooklyn and the Bronx, New York, where rappers made music in difficult circumstances ranging from shootings to crime and the illegal drug trade. In China, the challenge is to find something that fits the context. Shootings are rare in a country where guns are banned and penalties for drug use are high.
The music of rap crews in Chongqing, another mega-city in the Sichuan region, reflected the flavor of gang culture as artists wrote about feuds and brotherhood vows. But most of today’s big acts no longer emphasize subjects like stabbing someone or drug use.
Wang Yitai, who was a member of Chengdu’s rap collective CDC, is now one of the most popular rappers in China. Their style has influenced mainstream pop sounds.
Wang says, “We’re all working hard to create songs that not only sound good, but also have themes that are appropriate for China.” “I think the spirit of hip-hop will always be about original creation and will always be about your own story.”
