I somehow stumbled upon a series of videos on Youtube documenting a freestyle battle in Shanghai. They brought in a couple of Beijing rappers and let them loose on stage with the Shanghai guys and this is what happened:
Man, it’s so vicious. A lot of different ways to say I’m gonna fuck you up, fuck your girl and straight up fuck you. It’s interesting that all the Beijing guys are dressed kind of thuggish (if that’s possible) and the Shanghai guys look like random dudes off the street.
If you watch most of the clips, MC Jverson (Shanghai) seems to dominate a lot of the battles, but he just sort of shouts obscenities and really going at people. There was a guy from Hunan that was trying to calm things down. And another Beijing guy that used his time on stage to say “we’re all in this together” (sadly, that’s how long they lasted). And the last clip, Young Kin (Beijing’s finest!) steps in and rips Jverson a new one.
I think this is the beginning of a beautiful feud.
When I was in Shanghai a couple of years ago, there would always be these guys who walked around with these long portable grills. They’d setup shop on a street corner and grill these little kebabs that looked pretty gross. It wasn’t until the end of my trip when a friend told me that they sold weed. Check out this link about weed in China.
I’m not too clear on the drug situation in China. I know that people use ecstasy, but only because I walked into club where everyone was on that stuff. But other than that, I assumed that it was a pretty big crime to have it. Which is why I was so surprised to hear this song: 大妈 from 天王星 (as an added bonus, there’s a guy that sounds like Lil’ Jon on this track). EDIT: Or, check out the MV which is titled the cheapest looking MV in all of China by the person who posted it.
天王星 seems to be more popular than most groups – with their weekly radio shows, appearance on TV shows and higher profile concerts – and that usually leads to more scrutiny from the Censors.
Anyways, here’s another weed-related track from MC茶米 a Taiwanese rapper. You can also check out my anywhere.FM profile for other songs.
If I’ve learned anything at school, it’s that there are many different versions of the truth. It all depends on where you are coming from and how you use those past experiences to interpret what you’re seeing.
With that being said, one of China’s first hip hop group 隐藏 had a song called 在北京 (Welcome to Beijing) which was pretty much sounded like a song commissioned by the government’s tourism bureau. Part of the reason for the uninteresting interpretation of Beijing is that out of the four people in that group, only one of them was born in China. And with two of them being white, you can safely assume that their day to day experiences are very different from the typical Beijing-er.
Now, a southern Beijing native 爽子 redid the song to show that some of the more mundane details of the area – boredom, drinking, traffic, Southside ghetto, etc. He even ends the song with就是大北京,能不来就别来! (That’s Beijing, don’t come if you don’t have to!). Check out the song here: 在北京 南城.
I just finished watching an interview on Mogo.com.cn with MC Webber. The guy asked him about whether or not there was a Chinese hip hop sound or style, to which MC Webber said that there wasn’t because everything they did was inspired by the American hip hop atheistic. Which is true, kind of. Everything I’ve found definitely sounds American-ish, right down to a guy that sounds just like Lil’ Jon. While they have those songs with a lot of Chinese flava’, it’s really just background instrumentals that anyone can really do.
Now, earlier I said, “kind of true” because I have this one song by 爽子 called 爱情史诗 where the chorus is recited the way they recite poems in Chinese. The cadence and voice inflections are unique enough that it can be instantly recognizable for foreign ears. It’s too bad that he didn’t do it for the whole song. But at the same time, doing for a whole song might be a challenge.
However, combine that type of flow with the Chinese instrumentals and the content regarding life in China, then we’ll have definitely have something close to a style of hip hop unique enough to be considered it’s own.
