My first korean hip hop
Heard that when i was in high school
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPC9erC5WqU

 

Think about hip hop ,the first impression usually was the legend like:2Pac,Dr.dre,Jay Z……. and recently we got like Kendrick Lamar , Drake ,Migos……as you can see , I can say 80% of the rappers they have related with south Africa and in fact , you can say that hip hop was from south Africa origin.

Back to the 40s and 50s in China , there was a special skill called ‘Xiang Sheng’(cross talk).

Xiang Sheng(cross talk)is a traditional Chinese comedic performance in the from of a dialogue or , much less often , a monologue or , even less frequently , a multi player talk show. The language , rich in puns and allusions , is used in a rapid , bantering style. Xiang Sheng is one of China’s foremost performing arts.

Modern Xiang Sheng is made up of four skills : speaking , imitating , teasing and singing.

To put it briefly , Xiang Sheng is a way to describe a story or sing a song with a percussion calls ‘castanets’. It is made by bamboo but now is made by wood.

The effect in a cross talk is accompaniment. The performer can use it as a kick or a snare , even hi hats.

After got in to 80s 90s there’s a new genre rising in America and that genre was focus on the way they perform is different , they ‘ Rap ’

‘ Rap ’ this word in Chinese and Mandarin is called 說(speak)唱(sing) 

And is the most important part in Xiang Sheng: speak and sing.

 

  Usually people from America or western country says : ‘Asian can’t do hip hop music , because they don’t have the sense of rhythm.’

I’ve got one example: MC Jin

  Jin Au-Yeung (Chinese name: 歐陽靖; born June 4, 1982), known as MC Jin, is a Hong Kong American rapper, songwriter and actor of Hakka descent who is the first Asian American solo rapper to be signed to a major record label in the United States. Born in Miami, Florida and later living in New York City, he lived in Hong Kong for several years before returning to New York in the summer of 2012. Jin began performing freestyles and selling his own mixtapes on the streets, in hip hop clubs and wherever else possible. While battling on the streets, he was spotted by Kamel Pratt, who then became his manager; together, they formed Crafty Plugz Entertainment. Au-Yeung's big break came when the BET program 106 & Park began inviting local rappers to hold battles in a segment known as Freestyle Friday. He won seven battles in a row, enabling him to be inducted in the Freestyle Friday Hall of Fame.Unlike other competitors, Jin occasionally spoke Cantonese in his freestyle verses.

 

MC jin in freestyle friday

 

  Talk about language , English got 26 alphabet there’s many way to organize and pronounce but in Traditional Chinese have 37 different alphabet and 5 tone to pronounce , the combination it’s more then English. 

  China and Taiwan those two countries using Chinese , and each cities in each country they have there own different way to pronounce Chinese , the simple compare is in the north side and south side accent , but its just a simple way to analysis , if you want to make it more complex , the varieties of Chinese might be over 15 different kinds of accent.