CHENGDU, China—In 2018, the censors who oversee Chinese media issued a directive to the nation’s entertainment industry: Don't feature artists with tattoos and those who represent hip-hop or any other subculture. Right after that well-known rapper GAI missed a gig on a popular singing competition despite a successful first appearance.
Security guards watch over fans of Chinese rappers during a performance in Chengdu in southwestern China’s Sichuan province, Saturday, March 16, 2024.
But by the end of that year, everything was back in full swing. “Hip-hop was too popular,” says Nathanel Amar, a researcher of Chinese pop culture at the French Centre for Research on Contemporary China. “They couldn’t censor the whole genre.”ROOTS IN THE WESTERN CITY OF CHENGDU The dialect lends itself to rap because it’s softer than Mandarin Chinese and there are a lot more rhymes, says 25-year-old rapper Kidway, from a town just outside Chengdu. “Take the word ‘gang’ in English. In Sichuanese, there’s a lot of rhymes for that word ‘fang, sang, zhuang,’ the rhymes are already there,” he says.
The price of going mainstream, though, means the underground scene has evaporated. Chengdu was once known for its underground rap battles. Those no longer happen, as freestyling usually involves profanity and other content the authorities deem unacceptable. The last time there was a rap battle in the city, rappers say, authorities quickly showed up and shut it down. These days it’s all digital, with people uploading short clips of their music to Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese version, to get noticed.
In the first season, the show relied on its judges’ star power to draw in an audience—namely Kris Wu, a Chinese Canadian singer and former member of the hit K-pop group EXO. At that point in time, Wu was at the height of his fame, and his comments as a judge that season even became internet memes. “Do you have freestyle?” he asked a contestant, dead serious, on Episode One—a moment that went on to live in internet infamy because people doubted Wu’s rap credentials.
Regulators had given the go-ahead for hip-hop to continue its growth, but they had to follow the lines set by the government censors. Hip-hop was now shuochang and a symbol of youth culture; it had to stay away from mentions of drugs and sex. Otherwise, though, it could proceed. “Five thousand years of history flows past like quicksand. I’m proud to be born in Cathay,” he sings, wearing a Qing Dynasty-inspired Tang jacket.
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