Rhino Entertainment Original
Wen | Founder Editor| Xia Tian
2021 marks the fifth anniversary of the birth of rap variety. These five years are the five years of rap variety show blowouts, the five years of Chinese rap step by step to the public, and the five years of rap transformation into a carrier for young people to express themselves, deeply influencing the aesthetic taste, entertainment style and life attitude of a generation of young people.
When rap terminology advanced into popular buzzwords, when turbans, sunglasses, and large gold chains were promoted to explosive wear items, and when rap songs were upgraded to "song list must-haves" loved by everyone, a generation of young people quietly grew up under the infiltration of increasingly mainstream rap culture.
If it were not for watching "Junior Rap Project", Rhino Jun would not have realized that this young people love rap so much. These young rappers who grew up with iQIYI's rap series have found diverse interests and hobbies from rap, explored ways to dialogue with the world, and now painted colorful "new stories" for rap variety shows.
In the fifth year of rap variety shows, how should rap IP hook up with juvenile rappers? Can the growth of the new generation of singers continue the vitality of rap IP? This is not only a new examination question in front of iQiyi, but also a two-voice question issued by the content track to the industry and the market.
5 years rap variety show
"Reinventing" young people's entertainment
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Rap has gone from "small circle carnival" to "embedded in the mainstream culture of young people", and now it has been five years. Looking back at the past five years, it is not an exaggeration to say that rap variety shows and rap culture have almost "reshaped" all aspects of young people's entertainment life.
In 2017, before the "first year of Chinese rap", rap is still a strange thing for most people. Through the iQIYI series of rap variety shows to amplify the influence and spread, in the following 17-19 years, the number of QQ music rap songs has reached 10 times that of before, and the cumulative playback has risen to 90.7 billion. (Data from the "Rap Youth Secret Picture Book")
After enriching their own listening sequences with rap, the new generation is not satisfied with this and has begun to fully dabble in trend culture. Mouth hanging daily skr, out of the street wear foot pedal AJ, hip-hop skateboard must learn the same, graffiti beatbox that is the basic operation. Weekends like to visit music festivals, animation exhibitions, daily love to wear tide cards, open blind boxes, so that the related tide play, tide brand industry market size has exceeded 10 billion. Tracing back to the roots, the "tide life" favored by the new generation has been more or less enlightened by rap culture.
The direct result of rap's "reshaping" of young people's entertainment was concentrated in the "Junior Rap Project". The teenager rappers who grew up watching rap variety shows integrate their personalities and interests into the expression framework of rap, and converge into different colors and fireworks in the show.
Cute and loving "Sunshine Boy" READON, while humming "Glad to Meet You", while waving to the stage, the painting style is completely different from the traditional rapper; Shakga, wearing a headscarf and sunglasses, looks like a silly big sister, and the heart is wild and loves to be afraid, defending the natural comedian characteristics of Chengdu rapper; and "Millet Spicy" Zhou Ziqian, who came out of "Youth with You 2", has a beautiful appearance and is sexy, wanting to jump out of the shackles of the rap circle and open the market for otaku listeners.
From rap competition to cultivating a new generation of rappers, behind the flow of iQiyi's production ideas, there is a lot of ingenuity: First, many new generation rappers are still "a blank piece of paper", which means that they have infinite plasticity under the label training system; second, the new generation of teenagers have diverse styles, especially READON and Zhou Ziqian, which are very different from the traditional rapper temperament, breaking the audience's one-sided cognition that "rapper must be cruel".
The faces of the teenagers are varied, and the personalities of the teenagers are also varied. Sipsu took a small bite and said harshly, "If you don't want to take the top three, you want to win the championship", "I want to become China's Bewhy" ;P C. The ambition is to revitalize urban rap, and wants to rush forward with Shenzhen, a non-rap town; Kidog, who has a contrasting personality of "two faces", is stupid and shy offstage, and the wild explosion on stage makes Pan Weibai and Zhou Zhennan of the Boss Group feel ignited and shouted.
Offstage, rap teenagers are students, social animals, and ordinary people engaged in various professions; on the stage, they are completely transformed into "I" with different fireworks, as if transformed into the "hot-blooded manga protagonists" who grow up on a main line of each person. This generational group portrait of the young rapper chasing his dreams is becoming the killer of this experimental variety show to conquer the circle-breaking audience.
Shout to your parents, speak for the city, be the first...
Teenage rappers interpret "rapping with life"
"A generation will eventually grow old, but there are always people who are young", this classic lyric of the Circle Hedgehog Band is also applicable to the change of the rap circle "Jiangshan Generation talented people". In "Junior Rap Project", a group of rap rookies aged 18-24 gathered together, we saw the youth, we also saw the fearless.
At the age when it has not yet been infiltrated by the world and is the most indomitable, compared with its predecessors, the "dare to say dare to do" of the teenager rapper may be closer to the rap core of Keep real. It is based on dissatisfaction with the status quo and dissatisfaction with exploration that teenagers are more courageous than anyone to chase dreams and dare to speak out, and their expression truly interprets the spirit of "rapping with life".
Mapped to the work, Chi Yixiao's "20021230" lamented his growth experience and called out to his family, and the chorus climax repeated "Must do it to show them" singing and crying Zhou Zhennan; the social fear of Kidog used "Balling Freestyle" to burst out of the "music universe", a sentence "overthrowing himself who once had no talent and weakness, prove myself strength to dispel the doubts about me" is the most wild cry of his heart that is soft on the surface; wait a minute and go home" The 21-word song name Divine Comedy" uses images such as oil paintings, windmills, dog tail grass, and rice spikes to create a sense of picture, and the fresh and natural melody rap makes the BOSS group shout "good".
In summary, it can be seen that the biggest difference between rap and other music is that "the singer is the author". Generally speaking, rapper's works are mostly composed by their own lyrics, compositions, designflows, etc., which means that rap is very suitable as a vocal channel for singers to express themselves, and to express the direction of the young people's progress.
"What teenager does not want to be the strongest", from Kidog's post-selection of this statement that can be selected as a show slogan, it can also be felt that the new generation of rappers in "Junior Rap Project" are using rap as an artistic carrier to explore themselves inward and express their personality externally. By listening to their hearts, the public can gain a more intuitive understanding of the new generation of groups.
In the process of exploring themselves through music, rap has also become a vehicle for young people to store their emotions and emotions, so that they can soothe and motivate their peers, as well as other age groups who were "once teenagers".
Chi Yixiao wants to prove himself to his parents, PC. wants to speak for the city of Shenzhen, Sipsu small mouth crisp is not afraid to reveal the ambition of "to be the first", and the attitude expression of the teenager rappers is full of complex and strong emotions, which is the internal mechanism of "Youth Rap Project" to make the audience have emotional resonance.
Rap Variety show how to deal with the new generation
"Playing Together"?
Rap variety shows have been done for five years, the audience has watched for five years, classic narratives are classic, and watching more will be tired.
If five years ago, iQIYI's rap series variety show was inviting a generation of young people to enter the rap world; five years later, these new generations of young people are advancing from the "changed" side to the main force of "changing the world", and the new generation of rappers began to take on the responsibility of reverse the IP endurance of rap variety shows.
Marvel movies often use "reboot" hero stories to continue the vitality of IP, rewriting incremental content on top of retaining the hero's core human design. From "China New Rap" to "Junior Rap Project", in essence, iQiyi has carried out a new story "restart" on top of the classic rap IP.
For the audience, under the framework of the original rap IP world view, the colorful colors of the new generation rapper give the rap variety show a juvenile atmosphere and original ecological color that has never been seen before, and this set of rap IP and young people "play together" a new narrative, just like Marvel fans suddenly saw a "Guardians of the Galaxy" in the Marvel Universe sequence.
Rap IP and the new generation rapper are able to "two-way blood transfusion". For the first time, the new generation rappers in the new generation of rappers are placed on the traffic stage at the center of the industry, giving the new generation of hipsters an excellent opportunity to advance in the rap circle and then lead the trend view of young audiences; the new generation rappers in the side of the box have contributed a new story mode of "Guardians of the Galaxy" style and innovative style to iQIYI rap IP.
In the derivative program "Rap Boy Loading", the hot dog said that "in the past, teenagers were a minority, well-known or older (rapper) did not dare to show their personality too much, but now a bunch of teenagers get together, just like the previous atmosphere is different", tired of the "Avengers" top battle, "Guardians of the Galaxy" characters personality, humor, comic also have a different point of view.
"Junior Rap Planning" introduced the "rap agency model" for the first time in the rap variety show, and formed a boss group and a rap mentor group. In addition to the first appearance of the music director Li Ronghao, A&R marketing director Pan Weibai, rap culture director MC HotDog hot dog, planning commissioner Zhou Zhennan, label manager Che Che, GAI Zhou Yan, VaVa Mao Yanqi and other well-known rappers will also appear in the position of the follow-up program "Rap Mentor Group", all in order to provide rap newcomers with systematic professional training and the company's top resource support.
Rhino Jun privately believes that boosting the development of the Chinese rap industry is a factor that platforms must consider when doing rap variety shows. In the past few years, iQIYI's achievements and contributions to promoting the development of the rap industry are obvious to all. Starting from the "Junior Rap Project", iQiyi seems to want to build a "petri dish" that incubates the new generation of rappers from Xiaobai to Big God, and this training model is "reproducible".
In the future, the key to maintaining the vitality of rap variety IP for a long time may lie in whether it can provide a steady stream of "new stories" and "ip new works" for the audience of the C-end market by "playing together" with generations of young people, and continue to "transfuse" talents and resources for the rap industry in the B-end market. In this way, rap variety shows may have the next five years, the next decade, or more.