Chinese hip hop (), also known as C-Rap, is a subgenre of
Chinese music
Music of China refers to the music of the Chinese people, which may be the music of the Han Chinese
The Han Chinese () or Han people (), are an East Asian ethnic group native to China. They constitute the world's largest ethnic group, ma ...
. Some of the earliest influences of hip-hop in came from films such as ''
Beat Street
''Beat Street'' is a 1984 American drama dance film featuring New York City hip hop culture of the early 1980s. Set in the South Bronx, the film follows the lives of a pair of brothers and their group of friends, all of whom are devoted to var ...
'' (1984) which entered China on video tape via embassy workers or foreign businessmen and their families.
History
The first DJ in China who played hip hop music on a daily basis was a resident at the first Chinese
nightclub
A nightclub (music club, discothèque, disco club, or simply club) is an entertainment venue during nighttime comprising a dance floor, lightshow, and a stage for live music or a disc jockey (DJ) who plays recorded music.
Nightclubs gener ...
Juliana's in
Beijing
}
Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...
in 1984.
At the time there were no other clubs in mainland China but Juliana's, which was already receiving monthly deliveries of records from London featuring labels such as
Sugarhill,
Tommy Boy
''Tommy Boy'' is a 1995 American buddy adventure comedy film directed by Peter Segal, written by Bonnie and Terry Turner, produced by Lorne Michaels, and starring former ''Saturday Night Live'' castmates and close friends Chris Farley and David ...
, and
StreetSounds
StreetSounds is a British compilation record label, that specialised in urban and electronic club/dance music during the mid-1980s. StreetSounds was an offshoot of producer and promoter Morgan Khan's StreetWave label. The first StreetSounds re ...
.
In 1992, China got its first regular hip hop nights (Fridays/Saturdays) at Kunlun Hotel Crystal Disco in Beijing.
Yin Ts'ang (隐藏) released a full-length album, ''
Serve The People
"Serve the People" () is a political slogan which first appeared in Mao-era China, and the motto of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It originates from the title of a speech by Mao Zedong, delivered on 8 September 1944. The slogan also becam ...
'' (为人民服务) (2002). The album was co-produced and written by British DJ Mel “Herbie” Kent, while being entirely recorded in his home studio. The group was featured in full-length articles in the ''Los Angeles Times'', and ''The New York Times''.
Chinese DJ V-Nutz (Gary Wang) claimed, "
hinese style isyoung, local kids really enjoy Western things right now. Then maybe after 10 or 15 years, maybe they can have their own style."). Hip-hop is often performed in English and many believe Chinese is not suitable for the genre; "people said, straight up, you can't rap in Chinese, Chinese does not work for rap... Chinese is not suitable for rap music because it's
tonal." XIV of the rap group Yin Ts'ang put it clearly, "I can tell you about what we ''don't'' rap about: gangbangin', pushin' drugs, or the government, that's a good way to not continue your career (or your life)."
Dana Burton, an American, started the Iron Mic competition, an annual rap battle which encouraged more free-styling and less karaoke-style performances, in 2001 (Foreign Policy, 2007). Burton recorded:
"The few rappers I met nitiallywere rapping in English. I'd say, 'Let me hear you rap', and they'd just do a karaoke thing, repeating a few lines of Eminem or Naughty by Nature. As an American that was so odd for me; you can't say anyone else's rhymes, you just don't do that. But it's the culture here. They like karaoke and doing someone else's songs." (Foreign Policy, 2007).
One underground Chinese artist, Hu Xuan, recorded all of the tracks on his album in Kunminghua, the local dialect spoken in the area of Kunming (Go Kunming, 2007). "One rapper spits out words in a distinctive Beijing accent, scolding the other for not speaking proper Mandarin. His opponent from Hong Kong snaps back to the beat in a trilingual torrent of Cantonese, English, and Mandarin, dissing the Beijing rapper for not representing the people."
Big Zoo
Big or BIG may refer to:
* Big, of great size or degree
Film and television
* ''Big'' (film), a 1988 fantasy-comedy film starring Tom Hanks
* '' Big!'', a Discovery Channel television show
* ''Richard Hammond's Big'', a television show present ...
became a popular Chinese hip hop group, but in 2008, one of the crew members, Mow left the team, and rapper Free-T released his song "Diary of Life," signaling the return of Big Zoo.
There is an official annual Chinese Hip-Hop Awards Show (中国嘻哈颁奖典礼).
The 2017 show ''
The Rap of China
''The Rap of China'' (), formerly known as (), is a Chinese rap competition show produced by iQiyi. The show was carried out in the form of three groups of producers Kris Wu, Will Pan, MC HotDog and Chang Chen-yue judging the performance of the p ...
'' brought hip-hop to new levels of mainstream success, with billions of online views,
From 2016, the
Chinese Communist Party
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victoriou ...
began supporting hip hop music as a new propaganda outlet. The Communist Youth League, a government-backed Communist youth movement, sponsored
CD Rev
CD Rev, also known as Chengdu Revolution or 天府事变 (tiān fǔ shìbiàn), is a Chinese Communist Party-sponsored gangsta rap group whose nationalist-themed music has been described in the West as propaganda. The group's music videos have bee ...
, also known as Chengdu Revolution, a hip-hop group , released the song "This is China", in June 2016, and "No THAAD" in May 2017. Hip-hop groups have expressed their patriotism in rap songs. Media scholar Sheng Zou wrote, “the state-centric ideology is aesthetically evoked by co-opting popular cultural formats, maneuvering grassroots nationalistic expressions and appropriating symbols of both tradition and modernity. Hip-hop is thus localized and sanitized as a cultural medium of propaganda.”
Overseas
Rappers of heritage in China have achieved renown success in the United States, the most recent is the
Miami
Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...
-born, NYs 106 and Park hall-of-famer
Jin, who raps in both English and Cantonese.
References
External links
Angela Steele (Fulbright Scholar Researching Chinese Hip-Hop)Hip Hop in China (documentary)Mogo.com.cn: Music, Videos, Interviews and Concerts from Mainland, China
{{Hiphop
C-pop