In the past year, the hottest rap group in the rap industry has been Digi Ghetto. Rooted in the city with the strongest rap atmosphere in China, Digi Ghetto can be said to have attracted much attention as soon as it was established, and the members are from well-known universities at home and abroad, which makes them labeled as a school bully.
However, there are not many people, in the short period of less than two years since the establishment of Digi Ghetto, they have also suffered a lot of criticism, especially in the past six months, with the release of the SAME name mixtape and Cyhper of the DIGI GhetTO team, this question of Digi Ghetto has become more prominent.
Just two days ago, a rap lover wrote a song called "Panda Blood" to diss Digi Ghetto, and put the controversy about Digi Ghetto on the table.
As a showmanship diss, this "Panda Blood" itself is still in place, but it is more worth talking about the points of the Digi Ghetto attack, which I summarized and included the following points:
- Digi Ghetto blindly imitates foreign rappers, and even suspects plagiarism.
- Digi Ghetto's works have a lot of English content, pretending to be fake foreign devils, and have nothing of their own.
- Digi Ghetto fans love to make rice circles and make the comment area smoky miasma.
I believe these three points are not only the idea of this rap lover, but many people who don't like Digi Ghetto also think that they have these problems. So let's start with these negative opinions today and see what kind of rap group Digi Ghetto really is.
First of all, is Digi Ghetto imitating a foreign rapper? The answer is undoubtedly yes.
Throughout the team, Thome's work has the shadow of nlechoppa; Asen's music also has traces of imitation of Polo G; Mac is YSL and Gunna's one; Mula Sakee's recent songs have the flavor of lil uzi; Kiv Prince and TOYoki have made EMO RAP before, and now there is a tendency to move closer to liu xiaopeng.
Given the abundance and diversity of styles in the North American rap scene, it's hard to say which of the hottest rap styles is today, but Digi Ghetto does cover the most distinctive and popular rap styles on the market since SoundCloud Rapper became famous.
In this sense, Digi Ghetto is indeed imitating the Rappers of North America.
But does this imitation matter? I don't think it matters.
Let's be clear, Digi Ghetto is not a bunch of rappers together, discuss which rapper can fire, and finally everyone slaps their heads and decides that you come to Polo G, I come to Lil Uzi.
In fact, they were originally netizens from all over the country, and they were all interested in these new styles, and finally everyone decided to gather in Chengdu to form a team.
And in this day and age, a new rap style is popular, which is bound to attract a lot of pursuit and imitation, as long as you flip through SoundCloud and Youtube, you will find that the United States is the base camp of these imitators, compared to Digi Ghetto has been very restrained.
Even in China, Digi Ghetto is not the earliest imitator, if you are impressed, in 2019, Deep Blue Children once had a beef with 19 NewWave rappers, and finally ended with the victory of Deep Blue Children.
There are also examples of older rappers in China, and there is no shortage of examples of imitating foreign rappers, such as Pikett and Huang Xu are influenced by Kendrick Lamar, but no one will think that they are replicants of Kendrick Lamar.
Therefore, it is useless to imitate early, the key is to imitate well and have its own characteristics.
In an interview with Film Teacher some time ago, Thome and Asen did not shy away from the fact that they were influenced by foreign rappers, but said that the style was indeed affected, but the content was definitely the story of Digi Ghetto himself.
This response to the content of the work also hits the faces of many people who say that Digi Ghetto's works are english-speaking and are fake foreign devils.
In fact, if you listen to Digi Ghetto a lot, you'll find that the lyrics of the dome often have his rambling personality in it, and overall it's very humorous, with a sense of Ty.'s day-to-day. Asen likes to talk about some distracting things, which is also related to his previous work as a Boombap.
Mac, whether it is the previous "Born 2 Be" or last year's "Liu Huaqiang", you can see that he is trying to add local elements to the song.
Mula sakee, kiv and TOYOKI are rappers who are more questioned by the outside world, their styles are heavy on atmosphere, tone, and production, so it is difficult to make breakthroughs in content, but overall, the whole team is still trying to create Digi Ghetto style works.
As for the accusations of fake foreign devils, it is even more nonsense, most of Digi Ghetto's lyrics are Chinese, and the proportion of English is not very high.
It's just that their dressing style and daily life are some closer to European and American rappers, but this is not a wrong thing, after all, rappers love to show off themselves, which is a very normal thing.
Finally, there is the so-called Digi Ghetto rice circle problem.
I think the problem is not so much about rice circles, but rather that Digi Ghetto fans and black fans are putting hats on each other's heads.
When I search for information about Digi Ghetto on Weibo, I often find that black fans scold Digi Ghetto for plagiarism, replicants, and follower dogs, and then they reply that black powder is a native brother and can't understand the trend music.
In my opinion, this is a byproduct of the rapid development of Chinese rap. From the 80s to the present, American rap has developed for 40 years before it has blossomed today, and Chinese rap has not officially become popular until 2017.
So there will be the same 20-year-old rapper, you do the golden age of Boombap, I play pop small EMO, the music genres of both sides produce a strange scene of 30 years apart, but everyone still belongs to the same rap circle.
In terms of listeners, fans of GAI, PG One, Jiang Yunsheng, Higher Brothers, C-Block, and Digi Ghetto may all listen to different types of music, but they may well be classmates in the same class.
Since everyone is a rap lover, it is inevitable to have a comparison psychology, and there will inevitably be such and such quarrels, as long as it is not too excessive, it cannot be considered a bad thing.
I think that if one day the rap circle doesn't have these quarrels at all, it will be a headache for rappers on stage.