China’s hip-hop culture is growing wildly under strict regulations

In 2018, the censors who oversee Chinese media issued an instruction to the country’s entertainment industry: Do not show artists with tattoos and those who represent hip-hop or another subculture.

Soon following, well-known, up-and-coming rapper GAI was not allowed to appear on a popular reality competition – despite having appeared on the show before, to great success. Speculation ran wild, and fans worried that this was the end of hip-hop in China.

Some media labeled the instruction a hip-hop ban.

Famous names

Hip-hop had just had a big year in China. The popular reality competition raised new stars and introduced them to the country of 1.4 billion inhabitants. Rappers who were used to performing in small bars with little income became household names.

It was on top of this that the instructions from the authorities came. Silence descended on hip-hop as a genre in China, and for several months there were no rappers to be seen on entertainment and competition shows on Chinese television.

But towards the end of the same year it was full swing once more. What appeared to be the end of Chinese hip-hop was only the beginning.

– It was too popular, says Nathanel Amar, who researches Chinese pop culture at a research center in France.

– They might not censor the entire genre.

Exploded

Since then, hip-hop has exploded in China. The genre creates its own twist while carefully adapting to the limits set by the authorities, balancing true creative expression with the “palatable”.

And the effort has been successful. Now Chinese musicians say they are looking forward to a coming golden age.

Although the genre has existed for decades in the subculture of cities like Beijing, it is in the Sichuan region that Chinese rap is now flourishing. Some of the biggest artists in hip-hop come from Sichuan: Wang Yitai, Higher Brothers and Vava are just some of the names that brought Chinese rap into the light. They rap in a mixture of Mandarin and Sichuan dialects.

Hip hop collective

The dialects are suitable for rap because they are softer than Mandarin and there are many more rhymes, says the 25-year-old rapper Kidway, from a town just outside Chengdu in Sichuan.

– For example, the word “gang” (gang) in English. In Sichuanese, there are many rhymes for that word: “fang, sang, zhuang”. The rhymes are already there, he says.

Part of Chendu’s hip-hop lore centers around a collective called Chengdu Rap House, or CDC, founded by a rapper who calls himself Boss X. The city has embraced hip-hop culture following pioneers like Boss X went from making music in a run-down apartment to to perform in stadiums in front of thousands.

– When I came to mainland China, they showed me more love in the first few months than I was ever shown in Hong Kong, says Haysen Cheng, a 24-year-old rapper who moved to Chengdu from Hong Kong in 2021.

Digitally

The price for having brought hip-hop into the light is that the underground scene has evaporated. Chengdu was once famous for its “rap battles”. These don’t happen anymore, as freestyle rap often contains a lot of profanity and other content that the authorities consider unacceptable.

Now everything happens digitally, and artists upload short snippets of their music on Douyin, the Chinese version of Tiktok, to get noticed.

In addition, the talent competition and reality show “The Rap of China” has established itself as perhaps the strongest driver in building China’s hip-hop industry.

When the first season arrived on the IQiyi streaming service, rap was brought into households across the country. The season’s 12 episodes were viewed a total of 2.5 billion times, according to Chinese media.

Prohibited topics

Two winners were named in the first season: GAI and PG One. Shortly following the win, however, the web was filled with rumors regarding the less than perfect aspects of PG One’s private life. The Communist Party’s Youth Party also criticized him for one of his old songs, which appeared to contain references to cocaine use – a major violation of censorship rules.

Then came the 2018 instruction that hip-hoppers might not be shown. PG One then discovered that all his attempts to release new music were quickly removed by the platforms he uploaded it to. The streaming service IQiyi even removed the entire first season of “The Rap of China.”

But in the late summer of the same year, the news came that there would be a second season – but with a twist. The English name of the series remained the same, but in Chinese the name was changed to “China has schouchang”, a term that also refers to traditional forms of storytelling.

The authorities had given the green light for hip-hop to continue its growth, but the artist must stay within the limits of censorship. The texts were not allowed to mention drugs and sex.

– It was a success for the authorities. They succeeded in winning over the hip-hop artists, says researcher Amar.

More creative

Some of the rappers, like GAI, have fully taken on the mantle of government. He won “The Rap of China” with a diss song, and a few years later he stood on a gala broadcast on the state channel CCTV and rapped regarding China’s 5,000 years of glorious history.

The censorship has also pushed the rappers to be more creative. But the development of authentic Chinese hip-hop is a work in progress. Hip-hop as a genre originated in the New York boroughs of Brooklyn and the Bronx, where rappers made music regarding their rough circumstances.

In China, the challenge is to find what suits their circumstances.

– We all try hard to make songs that not only sound good, but have subjects suitable for China, says Wang Yitai, who was a member of the hip-hop collective in Chengdu, and is now one of the most popular rappers in China.

– I think hip-hop will always be regarding creating something original and will always be regarding your own story.