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Podcast Transcript:

The Rising Phenomenon of Chinese Hip-Hop: Analyzing the Evolution of Hip-Hop in China

[theme music] Hip-Hop was introduced to China in the 1990s and has grown in popularity and influence ever since. In 2017, the famous reality show “The Rap of China” officially brought Hip-hop music to mainstream Chinese culture. By examining the evolution of Chinese rap culture and highlighting interviews with influential Chinese rappers and music industry workers, this podcast will chronicle the history of Chinese Hip-Hop, reveal how the modern Hip-Hop industry function, and analyze how contemporary hip-hop artists navigate oversight from the government by emphasizing Chinese cultural core values through their music. Hello there, this is Linda Pan. Welcome to my Global Scholar Diploma podcast: the Rising Phenomenon of Chinese Hip-Hop-- Analyzing the Evolution of Hip-Hop in China. [theme music]

Chapter 1. Introduction, the history of Chinese Hip-Hop—from underground to mainstream

Although there isn’t an exact birth date of rap music, we normally acknowledge that rap was born in 1974 in the South Bronx, New York state. At the start, there was no clear differentiation between “Hip-Hop” and “Rap,” but later when this form of art evolved into different main categories, which are “DJ,” “Breaking,” “Rapping,” and “Graffiti”, Hip-Hop became the name of a culture that includes all the spirits and art forms. Afrika Bambaataa, the old-school master of rap who created the music “Planet Rock” that mixed funk, techno, and drum synthesizer into rap music, dates rap all the way back to his motherland, where tribes would use call-and-response chants. “And then in the 1930s and 1940s,” Bambaataa said, “you had Cab Calloway, who is the grandfather of rap music, pioneering his style of jazz rhyming.” From Cab Calloway to Bambaataa, from the Bronx to South Central Los Angeles, where gangsta rap was raised, Hip-Hop culture, especially rapping, gradually became a mainstream culture and art form throughout the U.S, and in the late 20th century, starting to influx into China. [Planet Rap playing]

Rap music first came into China during the early 1990s through “dakou”(打口) tapes and CDs on the black market in major Chinese cities such as Beijing, Chengdu, and Shanghai, which “dakou” “refers to unsold discs and cassettes that were sent to China by large Western companies for recycling.”

“我年龄比较大，我是八零后。我现在是属于耍家帮的厂牌主理人，我自己的职业是dj 。接触到说唱是在九五年。当时在大陆市场，如果你要听小众音乐都是要去买打口碟的。我当时就买到了一张roundDMC的一张专辑发现和现在身边人听的东西不一样。后来才知道这就是说唱。那个时候整个中国的说唱很少，也很难接触到。所以我当时更多的是和跳街舞的人一起玩儿，因为跳街舞的人会带说唱的cd 和funk的cd。后来我就想要怎么和街舞的人有话题，又因为自己真的喜欢所以就找了个师傅去学dj。我学完dj 以后就觉得要做一些帮助这个行业发展的事情，就开始组织比赛了。”

“I am a post-80s generation. I am now the label manager of the (耍家帮) Playhouse Gang, and my own occupation is DJ. I came into contact with rap in 1995. At that time, in the mainland market, if you wanted to listen to niche music, you would have to buy the “dakou” tapes. I bought a RoundDMC album at the time and found it was different from what people around me listen to. It was only later that I found out that it was rap. At that time, there were very few rap songs in China, and it was difficult to hear rap music. So I decided to play with the b-boys because they would bring rap CDs and funk CDs to their practice. Later, I found a teacher to learn DJ. After I finished learning DJ, I felt that I needed to do something to help the industry develop, so I started organizing breaking dance competitions.”

“至于我是怎么接触到说唱呢？其实是动感地带零三年在为全国的巡演招演员，需要mc，dj和街舞演员。我被选上dj，从早上十点钟放歌放到晚上六点，薪水是八十块钱人民币。但是我发现我的朋友老熊，成都说唱会馆的创始人，他那个时候每次表演只有三十分钟，他收五十块。我发现说唱好像比dj 更赚钱。”

“As for how I got into rap? In fact, it is quite hilarious. Dynamic Zone is recruiting actors for the national tour in 2003 and needs MC, DJ, and breaking dancers. I was selected as a DJ, and I played songs from ten in the morning to six in the evening, and my salary was 80 yuan or 15 dollars in total. But I found out that my friend Lao Xiong(老熊MOW), the co-founder of CDC Chengdu Rap Club, at that time only performed 30 minutes each time, and his salary is 50 yuan or 7 dollars for 30 mins. I find that rap seems to make more money than DJ. That’s when I decide to do rap”

This is Nib from Chengdu, he is an OG Chinese DJ who is now the director of his label the “Playhouse Gang”, which evolved from a hip-hop connecting website forum he created in 2014.

“最早的时候是个bboy ，我们那边信息比较封闭，家里的fm收音机只能收到一些国际的电台。于是就听到这种音乐了，再加上我本身跳街舞，一下子就开始喜欢上了这个音乐类型。那个时候还有很多网站论坛，我们最早的论坛叫5515，在上面就认识了很多同样喜欢hip hop 的朋友。总的来讲还是先接触到的hip-hop文化的别的元素比如breaking，graffiti和滑板，然后才知道说唱音乐。发现这是一种自我表达的方式。后来就开始尝试写歌词，然后我们在论坛里面大家也会互相交流想法，写押韵的歌词，慢慢的就开始说唱音乐这条路了”

“At first, I was a Bboy, the information at that time was relatively circumscribed, and the FM radio at home could only receive international radio stations, which is where I heard rap music. Since I was also a breaking dancer at the time, so I immediately started to enjoy this type of music. There were many website forums for hip-hoppers, our earliest forum was called 5515.com, and I met many friends there. Generally speaking, I'm first exposed to other elements of hip-hop culture such as breaking, graffiti, and skateboarding, and then I learned rap music, found it a way of expressing myself, and then I started to try to write lyrics, exchange ideas, and slowly started my journey in rap music.”

This is Csir, an OG Chinese rapper from Beijing, who is now working on planning Hip-Hop TV programs and doing live streams on Tiktock to share some rapping techniques. Nib and Csir are both the first generation to get in touch with Hip-Hop music. For about 30 years, they remain to be underground hip-hoppers until the emergence of the reality show “The Rap of China” which totally changed their destiny. [Csir music clip]

There appeared many rap groups and rappers in the early stage of the Chinese Hip-Hop history, I will filtrate and introduce the most representative few and their music. In 1993, we saw the first music album in China that is labeled “Chinese rap”. It is called “Someone” by Xiedong. [short music clip]. In 1999, an influential group, Hi-Bomb(黑棒), was founded in Shanghai. The group remains famous to this day for their hit song “No.87 on Xiafei Road(霞飞路87号 )”. The song combined Shanghainese dialect, English, and Mandarin, the language changes and flows smoothly, becoming a lot of people’s favorite music at the time. [short music clip] The Taiwan market, at the time, also started to emerge rap music. In 1998, a 20-year-old rapper Yao Zhongren(姚中仁) started uploading his rap demos onto MU, Taiwan’s biggest online discussion forum for hip hop at the time. He was later better known as Mc.HotDog. Mc.HotDog and his longtime collaborator Zhangzheng Yue(张震岳) later became two of the judges in “The Rap of China”[short music clip]. Ouyang Jin(欧阳菁), or Mc. Jin became the most influential rapper stepping into the new millennium. In 2002, he proclaimed the champion of Freestyle Friday, a freestyle battle in America, for seven weeks in a row. Soon signed to Ruff Ryders Entertainment Label, and debuted in a few months with the album “The Rest of History” and the famous music “Learn Chinese” [short music clip]. He quickly became the widely acknowledged first Asian-American rapper. Speaking of underground rap battles, there were two in China that could not be ignored in the history of Chinese Hip-Hop. In 2002, Detroit-born Dana Burton organized the first Iron Mic in Shanghai, crowning Mc. Webber the champion. Mc. Webber is a member of one of the most famous rap groups Yin Ts’ang in the early 21st century.[short music clip] [short document clip].

MC. Webber: “I met Jeremy in 1999 when he came to China and he brought two boxes of vinyl records with him. At that time I’d never seen a vinyl before. I was a DJ back then but I use CDs to remix. I went crazy the moment I saw his vinyl. So I asked him “why did you come to China?” He told me “I want to bring hip-hop to China.” I told him “I really like hip-hop too maybe we can do it together.””

A year before the release of Yin Ts’ang’s album, Bamboo Crew (竹游人) was founded in Shanghai, featuring Zeero, the city’s first female rapper, and BlaKK Bubble, who rapped in the Shanghai dialect. People at the time called the two groups “Yin Ts’ang in the North, Bamboo in the South.”[short music clip]

As we saw more and more rappers appear, Nib summarized the Hip-Hop social mode at the moment by saying:

“比如说今天有一个演出，这里有一帮说唱歌手，那有一帮，然后品牌在选的时候我们会做什么呢？晚上约架。打赢了，第二天就去演。所以说那个时候我们去演出的时候，经常就鼻子是肿的，脸上还是青的。”

“For example, if there is a show one day, and two groups of rappers are fighting for the opportunity. Then they would arrange a fight at night. Whoever wins goes to the show. So I still remember going to perform with my nose swollen and eyes blue.”

From 2001 to 2007, we saw a rising number of rap crews around the country, just to name a few: Kung Fu from Tianjin, Bang Crew from Shanghai, Keep Real from Chongqing which later became the Hip-Hop label GO$H, C-Block from Changsha-based label Sup Music, Big Zoo in 2005 from Chengdu founded by Mow. Mow later became one of the co-founders of the Chengdu Crew CDC label in 2010, CDC is still one of the most famous and representative Chinese Hip-Hop labels nowadays.

A controversial rap group called In3 emerged in 2008, with their debuted album “unknown artist(未知艺术家)” and the music “Beijing Evening Newspaper(北京晚报)” and “Hello Teacher(老师你好)”. Their explicit expression about the dark side of the society with the dandiacal sentiment Beijing dialect contains, drew them many fans. However, in 2015, more than 17 of the group’s songs were wiped from the Chinese internet by the government’s Culture Bureau due to what the authorities considered “vulgar and violent content.” we will talk more about the censorship in the following chapter.[short music clip]

2014 ushered the finale of Iron Mic, two years before, in 2012, Xi’an hosted the first 8 Mile Underground (地下八英里) competition. Representative participants included rappers such as Masiwei who later became a member of the rap crew “Higher Brothers” under the CDC label, and PG One and BeiBei from HHH(红花会). In particular, PG One later became one of the champions of “The Rap in China”. 8 Mile Underground has cultivated many national-wide well-known rappers, which is a rarity in the pre- Rap of China era.

Rappers who attended 8 Miles Underground became fairly famous in their areas at the time while rap music and rappers caught more attention from the Chinese media regulation associations. In 2015, a Sichuan group called CD REV debuted. Supported by the Chinese government and Communist Youth League(共青团), published music “The Force of Red”. The lyrics were very radical toward DPP, the Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan.

Far away from us, forgot how to act

Even dogs know to come home with a thankful bark

Why y'all zombies in the region?

Don't know who is your mom?

Taiwan ain't a country, bitch, at most a county” [short music clip]

Until today. They are still known as the “China’s reddest rap group” and their “authenticity ” as a rap group is still a controversial topic on the world’s media stage.

In the same year, Higher Brother was founded, starting them on a road that would lead to global recognition behind the 2017 release of their debut album “Black Cab”. [Short music clip]

In the summer of 2017, precisely June, Hip-Hop popped into the mainstream media in almost one night. The miracle is made by the reality show “The Rap of China”, which is a production with over 200 million RMB, or 29 million USD budget made by Baidu-owned streaming platform iQIYI(爱奇艺). [short show clip]. By inviting Wu Yifan(吴亦凡), or Kris Wu, the former member of the Korean’s famous K-pop Group EXO as one of the judges of the show, the program gain many fan bases and original viewers. Then, with the most famous phrase from the show: “do you freestyle?” said by Kris Wu to every contesters[short quote clip], the show suddenly became an iconic symbol that summer and introduce the whole Chinese younger generation to rap music.

Until now, the first season of the show has been viewed more than 3 billion times. Rappers from the show, even those who did not win the championship, suddenly became major stars. For example, Modern Sky- signed rapper Tizzy-T, May 2017, was paid 30,000RMB for a music festival appearance. A few weeks later, he was commanding fees of 300,000 RMB after being the show’s top ten finalists. Today, he has more than 5 million followers on Weibo — the type of popularity an underground rapper could never imagine. Now we can imagine the situation with the two champions: PG One and Gai.

The sudden famous did not bring PG One and Gai a long-term prosper as Hip-Hop stars. China’s pop-cultural mainstream is always been carefully controlled and sanitized compared to underground rap culture which is quite a mixed bag. The Rap of China is a wonderful example. After GAI and PG One were crowned co-champions at the end of season one, they were hit by a series of scandals, few months later, the official “Hip-Hop Ban” is being implemented on mainstream media by the SARTF, State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television.

Chapter 2: Censorship and the rappers’ resolution

In January 2018, Communist Party authorities published a sudden decision to prohibit any representatives of Hip-Hop culture in television stations after an intensive propaganda campaign led by the Communist Youth League in that early January, accusing PG One of encouraging young people to take drugs and using misogynous lyrics in the song “Christmas Eve”[short music clip].

纯白色的粉末在板上走

The pure stuff is spread out on the floor

和homie roll起 怕的都去休息

I’m rolling with my homies, I’m worried they’re all going to fall asleep

跟我们一起来到酒吧前

Before we all hit the bar together

The “pure stuff” here means the drug, which is banned by explicit order in China. PG One later posted a formal apology on Weibo but it did not make any change. His music was banned on the internet and no other TV shows dare to invite him again. Later the paparazzi creepshot his secret affair with a married actress Li Xiaolu, which forever smothered his possibility of coming back.

However, this is not the first time Chinese censorship targeted Hip-Hop culture and rappers. In the documentary: “Underground Hip-Hop in China” filmed in 2011, the producer asked Crooked Eye, the hip-hop public relations manager of Yin Ts-ang about the censorship of music at that time:

[documentary clip]

The scariest thing about China is that there is no freedom of speech or freedom of media. The government doesn't want people to know things. There is a government bureau called the culture bureau. They control all the lyrical content of the music. If they don’t like the content of your music, they would cut it. We are not allowed to sing or rap about anything critical of the government, express our opinion about society or current events, use curse words, or talk about sensitive topics or politically sensitive people. When the government tells you “you cannot publish this” you can only remain underground.

However, at the time of Yin Ts’ang, there wasn’t an official policy published. On August 10th, 2015, People’s Daily announced a rap music blacklist published by the Chinese Ministry of Culture that banned 120 songs from all music distribution platforms, and the artists involved were all banned from performing in the public because the authority believe these songs promoted “obscenity, violence, crime, and jeopardized morality.” In3’s “Good Morning, Teacher”(老师你好) impressively appeared in the first place on the list, followed by “Beijing Evening Newspaper” which contains the lyrics “Some people sleep in underpasses, while others eat out on government expenses.” In September 2015, members of In3 were arrested by the police since they broke the rule and performed in a concert at Kunming.

The Chinese government, especially after Xi came into power, ordered all public figures to spread the “ positive energy” of socialist values. A young student rapper called NEO from Shanghai talked to me about this during our interview:

“这首歌是几年前写的，算是我比较早期的作品之一。当时就是很愤世嫉俗，有很多看不惯的事情，然后每每遇到都会去写下歌词阴阳别人。现在的话我会更正能量，呼吁大家一起努力。”

“Few years ago when I wrote lyrics I was pretty cynical. There were a lot of things I couldn’t understand, and every time I encountered it, I would write down lyrics to assail. but I know that I won’t be talking like that now, rather, I’ll show positive energy and call on everyone to work together. I believe It has to do with the culture. When American rappers use an explicit language, they make the audience listen and respect them. But to express the same thing in Chinese, it sounds more vulgar and scrannel. This is the cultural difference. We got the Chinese Confucianism advocates for more peace and humbleness from thousands of years ago. Therefore, Chinese people will be more accepting of such humble and peaceful expressions from the bottom of their hearts.”

Now let’s talk back to the “Hip-Hop Ban”, which also aimed at PG One’s co-champion in “The Rap of China”: Gai(盖). His appearance on the very popular music TV show “I Am a Singer”(我是歌手) was canceled right away and all the footage of his appearance on the first episode of that music show was totally removed from the internet. The aftershock of “Hip-Hop Ban” further forbade TV shows to invite guests such as tattooed artists, representatives of Hip-Hop culture, sub-culture, or “dispirited culture(丧文化)”. However, today, Gai is the well-recognized, most successful Chinese rapper that actively appears on government-sponsored TV shows and got supported by the mainstream media. By analyzing his journey of success, we can see what the Chinese authorities really want and do not want to see in the culture of Hip-Hop.

Gai did not find the correct answer on his first try. Right after he got banned from all TV shows by the “Hip-Hop Ban”, he found an opportunity to express his patriotism and show the good behavior by going on a CCTV-3 show “I Want to Go to the Spring Gala(我要上春晚)”, where he performed “Long Live Out Motherland(祖国万岁)”. Despite the inconsistency of the censorship, this performance might gain him some respect from the authorities, but his fans and audiences who are interested in rap all got mad, accusing him of being a flattery dog of the Chinese government and querying the “authenticity” of his music for not “keeping real”.

Afterward, Gai changed his strategy and started to work on combing his “jianghu flow” trap with traditional Chinese arts. Gai was known for his “jianghu flow” since the era of 8 Mile Underground contest. “Jianghu” is a phrase derived from an ancient Chinese literacy work “History as a Mirror”. The direct translation of the phrase is “walking along rivers and lakes”. For me, the word depicts a world in which the society is not ruled by anyone, not by a government or a president. There are many factions and gangs, and people fight with each other to survive. The main spirit expressed in the concept of “Jianghu” is free from authority ruling, code of brotherhood, struggle, conflict, solidarity, and loyalty to friends and the elders. At the final round of “The Rap of China”, Gai performed “Kong Cheng Ji(空城计)”. The name came from one of the “four classic novels(四大名著)” of Chinese literature: <Romance of the Three Kingdoms(三国演义)> by Luo GuanZhong(罗贯中), in which “Kong Cheng Ji” is one of the strategies Zhuge Liang(诸葛亮), the prime minister of the Kingdom of Shu(蜀) used to win the battle. With Sichuan Dialect and a confident vigor, Gai depicted himself in the “Jianghu”. Noteworthy, his lyrics also drew imagines from other famous poems such as “Shu Dao nan/ Shu’s difficult trait(蜀道难)” and “Qiang jin jiu(将进酒)” both by Li Bai(李白), the famous poet in China. It is the cultural context contained in Gai’s music and his ability to write rap lyrics and poetics to resonate with Chinese history that earned him the ability to gradually gain popularity and acceptance by both the hip-hop fans and the Chinese government. [short music clip]

Another point that Gai did very well is that he ingeniously converted some characters in Hip-Hop into what Chinese people are more familiar with. For example, the gangsta.

“我会经常去研究为什么Gai能够走到中国说唱圈的顶流。他其实是把国外的帮派文化，变了一种形式和中国的江湖文化进行了一个结合。你想，我党永远不会承认帮派，但是他会承认武林门派。打个比方，你要说什么做KKK党，黑社会，国家是绝对不会认可的，但是你宣扬青城派、峨眉派、安派，中国又是认可的。中国认可武林因为它是中国历史文化里面传承下来的具有血气方刚的，勇敢的代表，所以国家愿意去扶持，也愿意去让它去传播。再去讲为什么Gai现在是共产党一直在推广的一个说唱歌手，就是因为他把美国说唱里面的那种炫富和觉得自己很酷的情绪进行了广域化：因为我是中国人，所以我拽，因为我是大国，所以我拽。gai表达的是因为我祖国强大，我厉害，我们中国人有文化自信。所以说这一块就是gai结合的最好的和最讨巧的地方。

I used to study how Gai can reach the top of the Chinese rap industry. In fact, he changed the foreign gang culture and combined it with the Chinese “Jianghu culture‘. Think about this, our government party will never admit gangs, but he will admit martial art(武术). For example, if you are talking about the KKK, the mobdom(黑社会), the state will never recognize it, but if you promote the Qingcheng faction(青城派), the Emei faction(峨眉派), and the An faction(安派), which is different Wulin crews. China will recognize it. China recognizes martial arts because it is a strong and brave representative of Chinese history and culture, so the state is willing to support it and let it spread. Let's talk about why Gai is now a rapper that the Communist Party has been promoting because he has converted the emotions of showing off and feeling cool in those American raps to the concept of “because I am a Chinese, I live in a big country, I then feel confidence”. The American rappers would say that it is themselves and because a lot of people admire them that made them confident, but what Gai expresses is that it is because my motherland, China is strong, so I feel powerful.

People admire Gai’s poetic and literate lyrics, the audiences are able to resonate with the music. they feel the strong power of Chinese traditional culture that other rappers could merely bring by just putting some Chinese instruments into their arrangement or singing out loud their patriotism with explicit lyrics that just sounds fake. Humble and implicit is part of the core value alongside Chinese tradition originating from the Confucian, which is pretty different from what Hip-Hop is like globally that emphasizes money, women, and power. This is where the Chinese truly localized Hip-Hop music for their cultural output.

Chapter 3: Looking into the future of Chinese Hip-Hop

As we look through the modern Hip-Hop industry, we see both struggles and positive futures. After the “Rap of China”, iQIYI launched a lot of Hip-Hop derivatives TV shows, such as the Hot-Blood Dance Crew(热血街舞团), a survival reality show on breaking dance, The Rap of China season 2,3, and 4, and FOURTRY(潮流合伙人), where the celebrities became managers and together operate and sale their own fashion brand. Obviously, Hip-Hop Ban was not able to eliminate the market of Hip-Hop at all, maybe due to its huge profit brought by what we called the fan-based economy. In 2018, PG One’s fashion brand DEEVAN sold 2.6 million RMB, or 377,000 USD in its first 30 minutes after release, surpassing sales figures for Uniqlo and Gap on its first day on the e-commerce giant Taobao. In 2020, iQIYI produced an idol casting show called Youth With You(青春有你) Season 2. The function of this show is that the audience decided which nine girls got to debut, in which they need to“da tou打投”, or buy votes to send their idols into the debut positions. The sponsor of the show, Mengniu Dairy, offered three additional votes for buying each bottle of their milk. Therefore, fans spontaneously started raising funds and bought thousands and thousand of boxes of milk. In the financial statement published by Liu Yuning’s(刘宇宁) fans club, which is the center of that season, the club spent in total 11,520,000 Yuan or 1,730,000 USD on buying milk. The data shocked many people, which soon got the attention of the Chinese media regulation associations after a video of people pouring the milk into the sink got exposed on the internet. In December of 2020, the National Radio and Television Administration forbade youngsters under 18 to buy digital rewards in any kind of live streamings, and the People’s Daily publicly criticized the program group “Youth With You” and banned their third season.

As the concept of Hip-Hop and rap music were widely known in China and with the advancement of technology, it became so easy nowadays for people to make beats or rap music by themselves. On one hand, it gave talented musicians who does not have the resource before a chance to show their ability. But on the other hand, the Hip-Hop market now in China was filled with all kinds and all levels of rap music. When I say all levels, I do not only mean the music production and singing skills but also what they express in their music and how much the musicians understand the culture and history of Hip-Hop. Maybe influenced by what they saw directly from the rappers: the rappers' clothing style, their gestures, and the lyrics or technique that sounds cool, the younger generation rappers might be attracted to these superficial characteristics of Hip-Hop and ignored what is behind this music, the aesthetics, the meaning, the emotional resonation, and most importantly, the music that expressed what the rapper truly wants to say. For example, Kris Wu is famous for his use of autotune in almost every music. Since autotune can weaken the vocal melody line, giving the vocal an electronic filter, it attracted lots of rappers who cannot sing well or who just love and want to imitate Kris Wu to produce music with autotune even when the style of their music does not fit with it. But what a good rapper or rap music should look like? For Csir, he believed that a good rapper doesn’t have to make his or her music a very radical and rebellious one for social improvement, but at least, an output that expresses them genuinely.

[Csir]我做说唱呢，其实就是我需要一个一个路径去表达自我。因为没有地方能够听到你的声音，比如我是一个说唱歌手，我觉得我存在，因为我有一个输出口，会有一群人会听见。我说某个事儿，我某个情绪有某个状态，让一群人听见，但是很多人他是没有这种机会的。其实大多数人就是看你写出来一首歌能不能获得共鸣。

I do rap because I need a way to express myself when there is no other place that can hear my voice. I feel like I exist when I am a rapper because I have an outlet and a group of people who will listen to me. I say a certain thing, a certain state of my emotion, and a group of people will hear it, while many people do not have this opportunity at all. In fact, most people evaluate the music just by looking at whether they can resonate with your song or not.

Nib shared what he believed to be a good rapper.

“当你是音乐从业者的时候，你是为市场而活。那么你在写歌的时候就会有两种方向： 第一个可能要作品。作品是什么？是代表你个人标签的，需要你的粉丝喜欢。但是如果你要在音乐行业里面去靠音乐赚钱，那么你一定就要去生产符合市场的产品。这产品是服务于什么？是服务于市场的，是服务于广大听众的。你写出来的歌不一定要给喜欢说唱的人，但是因为你的说唱会让不了解说唱的觉得他们也可以去尝试听或者唱说唱。只有这样我们才能推动行业的发展。”

“I always tell my rappers in my label that: when you are a rapper, you live for yourself; when you are a music practitioner, you live for the market. Then you will have two directions when writing songs: The first one is personal production. What is personal? It represents your characteristics and what your fans like about you. But if you want to make money from music in the music industry, then you must produce products that fit the market. The songs you write are not necessarily for people who like rap, but because your rap will make people who don't know about rap feel that they can try to listen to or sing rap. Only in this way can we drive the development of the industry.”

Mr.Mai, a current musician, and program manager at iQiyi, criticized the phenomenon of rappers imitating Kris Wu and all using autotune in rap music, and shared what he believes is important for a rapper and a music company.

“重要的是当所有的年轻的，像你说的少年也好，我说的新鲜血液也好，他们接触的这样的东西，自己的认知是自己的思考。当太年轻没有办法自己思考的时候，那公司到底在一个什么样的位置来去嗯帮助他们思考，代理他们来去让他们去考虑或思考什么样的音乐类型，可以用什么样的音乐类型不可以，而不是想都不用想不懂脑子的把所有东西都加进去.”

The important thing is that the fresh blood teenagers, or young rappers when they come into contact with rap music and Hip-Hop culture, they need to have their own cognition and thinking. When they are too young to think for themselves, the position of us, the company, is to help them think, consider for them what kind of music should they use, instead of adding in every element that is popular at the time into their music.

Mr.Mai helped with the production of “The Rap of China” and “The New Generation Hip-Hop Project”(少年说唱计划) in 2021. He is now a co-manager of the Hip-Hop label BKStore(不可施道) including the five rappers who came to the final round of the show “The New Generation Hip-Hop Project”.

Although it sounds like the modern Hip-Hop industry in China has brought fairly negative effects, and the industry is very profit-driven, I feel confident about the future Chinese Hip-Hop industry since I know there are people who work hard and trying to help the young rappers and the industry to walk on a better future.

Nib, since he is very aware of the dominant power of the CDC rap label in Chongqing, which his label, the Playhouse Gang could hardly compete anymore, choose to make his label a place for what he called “hatching the new generation”. What he is doing now is to help the young rappers construct a positive and healthy attitude as a person and a rapper, helping them find the style that fit them the most, and trying to demonstrate music that can make the listeners learn something about our culture.

“耍家帮的厂牌，在整个成都来说，可能更多的是像一个hip-hoper的孵化器。它不像其他厂牌，一定是获得一些成绩的人，才能加入在进去。在耍家帮是我把更多的我的资源和我的经验交给他们，为他们排除挫折，在我正确的引导下，慢慢去成长。我们完成的歌手是零到一的过程。”

“The label of the Playhouse Gang in Chengdu is more like a hip-hopper incubator. Unlike other labels, which rappers must have achieved some fame to join, in Playhouse Gang, I taught those young rappers my experience and gave them my resources. By eliminating setbacks for them, they grew under my correct guidance. In short, I help rappers to grow from zero-to-one.”

“然后其实我们也知道，说唱文化里面有一些不好的东西。所以我一直会以一个大家长的形象，正确的树立这些年轻人的价值观。因为中国明文规定不能沾毒品，所以我们会对所有加入耍家帮的人全部尿检啊。我们也是因为以前吃了很多亏嘛。其实说唱这个文化对小孩子的影响是特别大的因为我自己经历过，所以想给年轻的rapper们织一条正确的路。所以从一六年开始，我们定了5大宗旨。1. 所有的说唱歌手加入耍家帮都要先尿检，不可以触碰任何毒品或者大麻。2. 不可以互相借钱。3.不可以在厂牌内部谈恋爱。4.不可以说消极的话。5. 不可以在厂牌内部搞小团体”

“I know that there are some bad elements in rap culture, and I have suffered and experienced a lot in the past, so I am always like the parent of my rappers and help them establish the correct core values. I want to weave a right path for them. Since China expressly stipulates that drugs are not allowed, we conduct urine tests on all of those who join the Playhouse Gang. In fact, the influence of rap culture on children is particularly big. Starting from 2016, we have set 5 major rules for Playhouse Gang. 1. All rappers who join the Playhouse Gang must have a drug test first, and must not touch any drugs. 2. Do not lend money to each other. 3. It is not allowed to date within the label. 4. Don't say negative things. 5. It is not allowed to form small groups within the label.”

“我们一直在打的一个概念就是通过说唱，就是年轻人九零后、零零后最喜欢的音乐形式去把中国的传统文化传达到。

这些小孩的那个心里面，比如说像像和那首歌讲的就是廉颇。蔺相如嗯，就是以联大同作为原型进行了一个一个一个改编嘛。对，所以说其实大家会听到的就是听到这个将相和这首歌，他觉得好听以后可能他就会到百度上面去搜索将相和是什么样的一个故事故事。那么这样的话，我们就把传统文化，就让很多年轻人哎他就看进去了。哦，这个廉颇蔺相如是负荆请罪，这个这个成语是怎么来的啊，就是他这样就能看出来。”

“Our main concept is to convey traditional Chinese culture to everyone through rap, which is the favorite music form of the post-90s and the new millennium generations. For example, the song "Jiang Xianghe"(将相和) performed by our rapper Lao Hu in the reality show “Rap Star” produced by Hunan Television tells the story of Lian Po(廉颇) and Lin Xiangru(蔺相如). If people hear and like the song, they may learn more about the story behind it. So in this way, we introduce the traditional culture, in this case, the literary quotation of the idiom Lian Po's guilt(负荆请罪), to the audiences. [music clip]”

“我们培育的年轻歌手长大之后，首先他们的价值观是非常好的。最终他们也会像我一样变到四十岁。如果他们还是按照之前的那种愤世嫉俗，怨恨世界不公，或是想要不停的去宣泄自己，当他们真正到了四十岁、五十岁、六十岁，有了家庭和孩子以后，就是对他们的另一半不负责，对家庭不负责，对社会不负责，对不对？”

When the young singers we nurture grow up, they have positive core values and attitudes. It is very important because I know that eventually, they will turn forty like me. If they are still as cynical as they used to be, always resent the injustice of the world, when they are truly forty, fifty, sixty years old, after they have a family and children, their negative attitude will not help them with their life, love, children and the responsibility as a citizen.

Nib’s work is pretty impressive. Before I talked to him, I portrayed OG rappers as hard to be close to, but he is very open to me, willing to share his dark past and his ultimate goal as a rap educator, which is a tag I gave to him. I can feel that he truly cares about the development of this industry, has the ability to analyze and think about what kind of rap can be both successful and educational in our culture, and I feel his genuine love for rap music.

Although Mr.Mai isn’t helping the rappers directly, his attitude toward the future of Hip-Hop music is pretty positive too. For him, in his contact with the new generation of rappers, he already started to see youngsters thinking, learning, and discovering the type of music that has their own personality and thoughts in it. For me, I have a lot of friends around me who are doing rap now too, in which some of them spend years learning the music theory, digital production skills, music history, and keep producing music to improve.

Looking into the future, for those who are able to be fairly well-known, there are two roads lying in front of them. The first path is to produce rap music that can spread Chinese culture and educating people, like what Gai did these years. The other path is to try to go on to the global stage, like Higher Brothers, which can provide them with more tolerance for their attitude, word choice, and topics. Either path will be helping the Chinese Hip-Hop to develop. For those amateur rappers, since there are too many of them now, they actually got more freedom to write whatever they want. Hip-Hop has evolved in China for more than thirty years until now. No matter if this culture remained underground or became a popular culture, we saw rappers struggle, reflected, be defeated, or succeed. We saw how all of them helped each other, together to find a balance between “keeping real” and surviving under censorship. Now, Hip-Hop has earned some trust from the Chinese government and probably will remain in the mainstream as long as there are still new generations who are working on it. When all rappers start to think, when all of them got different ideas on what they want to pursue in their music, I believe there will be a more diverse, well-intentioned modern music phenomenon waiting for us in the near future.

Thanks for listening to this podcast, I hope you gain a better understanding of the Chinese Hip-Hop history and modern industry phenomenon in China. Goodbye. (Reference Next Page)

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