Author | Yellow Grid Edit | Fan Zhihui
"Hip hop is dead, and it's full of rappers who can't even rap"
The lyrics of diss's entire rap scene are from the song "No Lives Matter" released by Tom MacDonald during last year's U.S. election.
The song attacks many of the "chaos" in today's European and American hip-hop circles: HIPHOP music has gradually evolved from a tool for the people at the bottom to a vehicle for excessive worship of money, display of guns and violence, and promotion of drugs. There is no doubt that this song will sting a large number of European and American rappers.
Of course, the problem doesn't just exist in the European and American rap circles across the ocean. In 2021, Chinese rap seems to usher in an inflection point, and several rap variety shows have fallen into the embarrassment of tepidness, and the broken circle has become a slogan. According to Yunhe data, this year's "Black Afraid Girl", "Rap Listen to Me 2", "Junior Rap Planning" three rap variety shows have not been able to enter the network comprehensive effective broadcast list TOP10.
Under the downturn, many people can't help but ask, why is Chinese rap no longer brilliant? On major social platforms, many people even began to miss 2017, the summer that belonged to rap. If you take "China Has Hip Hop" as the node in 2017, since then, Chinese rap has gone from the underground to the ground, from the niche to the public, and has also ushered in the golden age of national rap.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="11" > golden age</h1>
Rap originated on the streets of the United States. In the 1980s, American rap culture was in full swing, and soon this kind of temperamental and critical music was brought to the world and crossed the ocean to China. Some musicians who smell the atmosphere of the times began to contact this novel music and tried to create Chinese rap.
In the mainstream field of Hong Kong and Taiwan music, the first person to try rap music was Hong Kong singer Lin Zixiang. In 1982, the first Cantonese record segment appeared on his album "Jingge Miaoyun Lin Zixiang", which was the first song to incorporate rap elements. The earliest recognized Hip-Hop style song was Yu Chengqing's December 1986 release of "Report Class Leader", which was included in the album "Sad Singer".
Chinese mainland's rap development lagged slightly behind. In 1992, Dai Bing and Tianbao formed Chinese mainland the first rap group D.D. Rhythm, and published the album "Hot Beat", which included a number of classic rap songs such as "Do You Want to Dance", which was also the first rap album in the Chinese mainland music scene.
If the circle is not broken as the standard, the golden age of China's rap development is after 2000. A large number of rap groups and individuals of great importance to the history of Chinese rap began to emerge, and the Internet promoted the further development of rap culture. In 2003, the evil teenager EB quickly became popular on the Internet, and his works such as "Wounded Death", "Miracle", and "Traitor" were widely disseminated among young people who loved hip-hop.
In the following years, Chongqing GOSH, Xi'an Chaos Battle Gate, Chengdu Rap Club and other rap labels that are now more familiar to the public have been established, and some time later, rap groups such as the Southern Expedition to the North War, Longjing Rap, Gentian Purple and so on have also been established, and the younger rap labels such as the Red Flower Society and the Living Dead have also been formed. Before 2017, rap music had already developed and grown in China, but most of it was still in the state of underground.
The golden age of Chinese rap in the popular sense was in 2017. The emergence of "China Has Hip Hop" has made rap music officially enter the public eye, especially by the generation Z. For the first time, many young people find that Chinese rap can be so harmonious and rhythmic, and the lyrics can make up all the attitudes they want to express, including rebellion and anger.
That summer, "rap black words" such as flow, double-bet, battle, diss, and freestyle were circulating in the streets, and hip-hop music such as "HotPot Base" and "Time" occupied the hot search of major music charts overnight. Even major mainstream media such as the Beijing News, Beijing Daily, Xinhua News Agency, and People's Daily have rushed to report that Chinese rap has ushered in its own golden age in the public sense.
Despite the occurrence of negative events such as PG ONE, the continuous broadcast of the "China New Rap" series of programs that took over "China Has Hip Hop" continued to help break the circle of rap culture, and the strength rapper that has been precipitated for many years has also contributed a large number of excellent rap songs.
For example, Na wu ke and Ice's "Three Pass", Ai Ge and Li Jialong's "Planet Fall", Fox's "Celebration Wine", Kafe. Works such as Hu and Liu Cong's "Economy Class" have been repeatedly played by countless audiences with their ingenious melodies, smooth rhymes and heartfelt lyrics, and have also attracted a large number of young people to join the trend of playing rap.
But how brilliant 2017 is, how disappointing 2021 is, the collective ratings of three rap variety shows are not good, and "Rap Listen to Me 2" focuses on the integration of rap and popularity, aiming to eliminate barriers and achieve circle breaking. However, whether it is the quarrel between the instructors or the gunpowder between the students, what is presented is confrontation and conflict, and the audience who has already seen countless similar bridges in the previous variety shows obviously no longer buys it.
And "Junior Rap Project" can't make rap newcomers become Rapstar, but more like an idol development plan. As a rap variety show, small talk, fighting, crying nose, and awkwardness occupy a lot of space, and rappers greet them no longer as "Wassup, man", but "It's a pleasure to meet you, and hug you when your heart is moved." "Audiences will understand after watching a few episodes that this is just an entertainment reality show with a rap shell, and that this shell is not hard enough.
"Black Afraid Of Girls" seems to be a relatively hard show. It is good to think from the perspective of female rappers, because even in the United States where Hiphop originated, female rappers were difficult to have a head start at the beginning because of gender, until later Mc Lyte landed on the hip-hop godmother position, Cardi B, and spicy chicken dominated the B list for many years, and they used their strength to prove that "women can also play rap, even stronger than men."
Back to this show, the intention is indeed worth affirming, but no matter how good the intention is, it ultimately depends on the work. Most of the works in the show have similar rhythms, write similar lyrics, and play with similar feelings. When the form is greater than the content, it is naturally unable to lead the show to break the circle, let alone help the rise of female rappers.
In the face of dismal market feedback, Chinese rap has entered a bottleneck period. Jumping out of the circle to examine themselves, in addition to the objective reasons such as the gradually hollowed out rap talent resources and serious internal friction, there are deeper reasons for Chinese rap to go downhill.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="36" > into the cage</h1>
From 2017 to 2021, in the five years, the development of Chinese rap has ups and downs. To this day, it is like entering an invisible cage and unable to find an exit. But the causes of all outcomes are complex, and if we classify them according to external and internal causes, Chinese rap entering the cage stems from absorption and self-castration.
Under the regulation of mainstream society, rap culture was gradually incorporated. After the rap culture that was originally spread underground entered the public eye, it quickly penetrated into various circles, and different cultures began to communicate and collide. At the same time, as the cake became bigger and bigger, capital also began to enter the game, and rap appeared in major variety shows, evenings, advertisements, and music festivals, becoming a hot wealth code at that time.
Of course, we have to thank these capitals for filling the stomachs of rappers, but there are always two sides to things, and another result of the rapid exit of the circle is that the rap culture in other circles has begun to be unsatisfactory, and excessive commercialization has made the entire industry impetuous.
In fact, at that time, the entire Chinese rap community was almost unprepared to go from the ground to the ground. With the scandal of rappers such as PG One and Babe, rap culture is gradually linked to negative effects, and a huge harvest has begun.
In January 2018, shortly after the PG One incident, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television issued a regulatory ban, clearly stipulating that tattoo artists, hip-hop artists, subcultures (non-mainstream culture), shouting wheat, and funeral culture (decadent culture) in the program are not allowed to be used. At that time, many rappers who participated in TV variety shows were urgently replaced, and the footage that appeared on the camera was also coded.
I have to admit that the mainstream culture's incorporation of rap is inevitable and should be, but the rap culture that has entered the rules is a bit overwhelmed.
A large number of innocuous drooling songs were mass-produced, a series of rigid fusions made rap music farther and farther away from hiphop, the single topic of peace & love erased the rappers, and rap became a symbol that attracted young people, losing its spiritual core. Under external pressure, Chinese rap not only did not "roll up" inside, but began to castrate itself.
If the rap industry in previous years wanted to make the cake bigger, then this year the cake has indeed become bigger, but it has also become unpalatable. In the five years of mainstream attack, Chinese rap has become more and more difficult, and under self-castration, it may be more difficult to maintain the original intention, which is roughly reflected in two aspects, singers and works.
Under the popularity of variety shows, a large number of powerful rappers have been seen, and the growing popularity and number of fans have brought them honor and income. However, the popularity of variety shows may bring rappers mountain-like jobs, but in a year or two, these jobs will disappear like the wind, and rapper will face the thorny problem of whether it can develop in the long run. Due to the imperfect protection and regulation of original musicians in China, plagiarism and piracy occur from time to time, and the songs carefully produced by rappers cannot get corresponding returns.
On the other hand, the demand for rap performances has increased as much as the demand for rap performances in endless evenings, music festivals, and livehouses have increased, and the evolution of multiple merchants seems to have become a better choice for rappers, but with the frequent scandals in the rap circle, the mainstream society's strict control of rap music, the constant iteration of new faces, the market demand for rappers has been less than the supply, and the road to commercial realization of rappers is still not easy.
As a result, variety shows and transformation have become the choice of many rappers, GAI himself is now in a music competition variety show, and before that, Evgeni, Jony J and others have also acted as mentors in idol talent shows, looking gentle and careful.
But compromise comes at a cost, they run counter to the path they once were, so they need to hide their attitudes, rein in their emotions, and even sacrifice musical personality. For rappers who really want to win with music, maybe fame is the beginning of self-"castration".
The forced self-castration of rappers also led to a serious consequence: the lack of works. If there have been rap works that are well known to the public every year before, then in 2021, the most out-of-the-circle may be "Big Bowl of Prison Rice". On the one hand, the unsatisfactory domestic music market can not let rappers make money, slightly talented and famous singers have better monetization options, and there are fewer and fewer rappers who concentrate on singing, and the output is reduced, and the fine products are naturally rare.
On the other hand, the lack of seniority and foundation of rap newcomers continue to pour into the market, their superficial lyrics, childish flow can not support the current market's imagination of rap, lack of thinking and novelty of the saliva song made the audience who once had full confidence in Chinese rap leave the table, not to mention the plagiarized songs of the tailors everywhere.
After breaking ground in 2017, Chinese rap continues to develop in the direction of popularization, commercialization and internationalization, which is indeed an inevitable path, but we cannot ignore that at the same time of rapid development, there have been many problems in China's rap industry, industry standards continue to decline, and the circle of gods is no longer ... Under the influence of editing and self-castration, Chinese rap has gradually entered an invisible cage.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" where the data-track="60" > goes</h1>
Chinese rap has developed to the present, do not want to and can not return to the underground, more importantly, on this one-way street, where will Chinese rap go?
At the beginning of the birth of rap music, it was full of criticism and thinking, and it was a tool for the voice of the disadvantaged. Blacks from america's slums want to complain about the injustices they have received, and language alone may not be heard, but it is possible to spread it widely when it is made up into rap.
As Yan Min, the program director of "Rap New Generation", said in an interview: "The meaning of rap is to speak up, to speak for the vulnerable, for the neglected, neglected, and invisible people." ”
Similarly, in today's day and age, the voice of the individual is mixed with the torrent of group noise, and the role is becoming more and more small, and the expression of rap direct lyricism can replace these individuals. Looking back at the rap works that can really stay, American rapper 2Pac's "Brenda's Got A Baby" depicts the story of an underage girl who accidentally becomes pregnant but abandons her baby for a living, a tragedy that often occurs in slums. Chinese rapper Song Yueting wrote "Life's a Struggle" after being framed and imprisoned by a friend as an expression of his struggle against fate.
For Chinese rap, it is still necessary to fall back to rap itself after all. About what is the core of rap, time has given the answer. It is true that rap is free, should not be labeled and defined, and expressed in diversity, but rap works that truly express and think should not be ignored and forgotten.
Rap is an imported product, blindly copying foreign rap topics such as luxury cars, gold chains, and bubble girls, it is inevitable that it will encounter water and soil dissatisfaction, and it will not be able to create a real Chinese rap culture. In fact, many domestic labels have always adhered to the path of Chinese style, such as C-Block's "Kill ninja", "Wild Family Fist", "Top Two Mouths", and the divine comedy "Jianghu Stream" cooperated with GAI, which has made the most effective combination of Chinese style and rap music, and played the trend of jianghu rap.
In addition, for rap, online variety shows have played a crucial role in its dissemination process. In the summer of 2017, "China Has Hip Hop" made rap culture move from a niche to the public, improving the living conditions of the entire circle, while the 2020 "Rap New Generation" made many people change their views on rap music with bold innovation and high-quality works, such as "Letter from the Academy" that satirized social events in Yuzhang Academy. These high-quality variety shows improve the audience's aesthetic of rap music, and allow rappers to free up their hands and really focus on the creation itself.
Not long ago, "China's New Rap 2022" has also been announced. According to the trailer, the contestants of the new season are likely to have GAI, Evgeni, TT, Yang hesu, Huang Xu, GALI, Ai Ge and other mature rappers to participate, known as the singer's version of "China's New Rap".
I have to say that this lineup of contestants is really Chinese the historical level of rap variety shows, and the official blog of "New Rap" also uses "above the ceiling" to describe next year's program. Whether the ceiling can be reached is still uncertain, but it can be expected that a revolution in the rap world may be quietly brewing.
From 2017 to today, Chinese rap has really entered the public eye for only 5 years, and problems are not bad, reflection and change are the direction. The road is long and long, how will the ecology of the rap industry be in the future, and whether Chinese rap can get out of the cage, we look forward to the answer to the question.
Typography | Anlin
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