Chinese Hip-Hop: The Use of Diss, and the Representing of Youth Culture

This essay takes a Chinese music TV programme Zhongguo You Xiha (The Rap of China) to discuss the Hip-Hop music in China. It states that 
the rising of the Hip-Hop in China is actually a cross-cultural phenomenon. On 
the one side, Chinese Hip-Hop keeps the idea of expression as its core philosophy. 
The sustainable economic development and 
the open-door policy in China, to some 
extent, have created an expansion of personal freedom in socio-economic life, allowing Chinese artists to express their feelings, emotions, attitudes, 
and, to make their voices heard. On the other side of the coin, Chinese rapping 
or dancing acts as a multicultural phenomenon, mixed with both the Eastern 
(Japanese and Korean) and the Western (American) styles. It appears as a new 
form of musical expression, functioning as a pop culture rather than a 
political one. Furthermore, Chinese Hip-Hop has been particularly attracted to 
Chinese youth. In other words, Chinese young rappers have potentially adopted 
Hip-Hop as a youth culture to fulfill their 
personal interests and needs.


Introduction
Since the late 1990s, more and more Chinese youngsters have learnt about the Hip-Hop culture through TV and radio programmes, starting to listen and even to practice rap music at a local level. The diffusion of rap music in China is part of a far-reaching phenomenon of this practice originally taking place in the USA, though, as Tony Mitchell argues: [I]t is becoming increasingly necessary to look outside the USA to countries such as France, England, Germany, Italy, and Japan, where strong local can call the Chinese rappers as "local" or "specific"?
To answer these questions, I will use an ethno-musicological approach, by observing and analysing the Chinese rappers on the programme.

Globalization, Cultural Imperialism and the Music
The received view about the globalization is one where the entire world has been imitating in the image of Western or American (Elteren, 2003: 171) [2]. The popularity of Big Macs, iPhones, Hollywood and Pops are signs, and are imputed by media, cinema and music, though, the development of the Internet has created a transnational space to connect netizens worldwide. This has recalled the notion of "cultural imperialism" (Golding and Parris, 1997) [3], which is firmly rooted in a political-economy perspective, considered as Western countries actively export cultural products or socio-cultural values on the developing world.
In fact, the globalization of culture has become a conceptual magnet attracting researches from a variety of interdisciplinary formations such as anthropology, media studies, sociology and arts. Although music is one of the engines of cultural globalization, the relationship between music and the globalization of culture is difficult to state.
On one hand, as one perspective on the globalization of culture views that music contributes to the homogenization of cultural differences across the planet (Barker, 2000) [4]. Taking MTV for example, it might be naive to argue that the West beats or defeats the East, this is partially because, the dynamic and resilient nature of oriental culture has been inserted in the music, their ability can be used On the other hand, globalization can also be seen as cultural hybridity or hybridization. The interface of globalization generates hybrid product of mixed cultural forms (Kraidy, 1999) [5]. This phenomenon in turn gives localization an adaptive or mixing process opposed to cultural imperialism (García-Canclini, 1995) [6]. Take the popularity of Chinese music in Chinese society as an example, the three main features can be those, mixing the elite form of opera with pops, adding foreign contexts to the original lyrics, and the mixture of several music elements in one song, all of which may integrate Chinese music into an impure genre.

Cross-Cultural Perspective, Cultural Translation and the Hip-Hop
It can be seen from the above argument, that globalization involves a constant mix of the global and the local. Indeed, global cultural forms have been reworked as localized and indigenized (Appadurai, 1996) [7]. Take music or music-making for instance, genres such as Hip-Hop seem to globalize well. In other words, the power of globalization has made the Western sounds and dancing travel easier, and be learnt faster, thus, created diverse versions of the Hip-Hop. When employing the notion of "cross culture" in this paper, I'd like to include "cultural imitation" but rather address "cultural translation". The former, as mentioned in the previous section, partially relates to cultural flows through where artists are following a path that may lead to cultural homogeneity (González, 2016, p.63) [8]. In this way the term "global" has been accepted by a cultural receiving, and the culture itself in turn becomes part of the global (Fabietti, Malghetti and Matera, 2002, p. 93) [9]. In this sense, the Hip-Hop may not the culture of a whole new but often refers to multiracial generations who want to find their ways for expression and music-making.
However, does this "imitation" include any local effect? If we read the phenomenon of "the rap outside the USA", take Japanese rapper YDizzy for example, with his focus on melodic rap, he has achieved wide attention. Another example is given to South Korean rap. One of the popular groups is Paloalto. Its music keeps melodic, pretty and simple styles, with a Korean language providing a perfect fit for Hip-Hop.
These examples remind me to think about the concept of "cultural translation". The term "translation" here, as Ray Chow defines: … is the process in which the "native" should let the foreign affect, or infect itself, and vice versa. (Chow, 1995, p.189) [10] In this sense, cultural translation may produce meanings that remain invisible or unspeakable in the original. For instance, the rap culture is various including Jamaican culture, blues, and street speech for either spiritual or commercial purpose, aiming to encourage the youth to gather and express themselves. However, such an aggressive attitude is less followed by the European artists, as Marie-Agnes Beau argues. Rappers deliver more positive message such as social responsibility, culture and peace.
[T]he search for quality in the form, as well as in the content, seems to be one of the main skill of European rap: there is no gangsta rap in Europe, and pure hard-core seems to become old fashioned and too far from a more nuanced reality. (Beau, 1999) [11] Thus, the social characteristics of the Hip-Hop culture can be met on both national and international levels. Rappers from different countries have been given international attractions, due to their individual styles. The next two sections will provide a short introduction of the rap in the USA and China. But I want to highlight that whatever differences between the two regions, the Hip-Hop is probably one of the most dynamic music in art industry.

The History of the Rap in the US
Hip-Hop music is basically considered to have been pioneered in New York in earlier 1970s. Besides its breakdancing as a style specific to Hip-Hop culture, the rappers of African-Americans produced rhymes based on their personal experiences and stories and have shaped a distinctive black youth culture. Rap's history is briefly in relation to the African oral tradition, meaning that singers are speaking rather than singing the words to the songs. Take earlier rappers for instance, they voiced their frustrations of a society in which urban blacks were oppressed, powerless, and underrepresented (Flores, 2012) [12], as Becky Blanchard notes: [I]n the United States, rappers created songs that, through performance and records, spread news of their daily lives, dreams, and discontents outside of their immediate neighbourhoods. (1999) 1 To some extent, earlier rappers in the United States were viewed as the voice of poor, urban African-American youth, whose lives were generally dismissed or misrepresented by the mainstream media. They are keepers of contemporary African-American working-class history and concerns.
Despite its power potential to address social issues, rap also has an impact on politics, and acted as a unifying voice for its audience. The official political rap could be heard in a song "The Message", starting to have more of a concept. Additionally, rap shares its roots with an ideology of rebellion 2 . It has gradually de-

The Rise of the Rap in China
Hip-Hop is known as Xi Ha in Chinese, and the rap takes the role as Shuo Chang (speak sing). For decades in China, Hip-Hop was nothing but embraced by a small group of fans. Jay Chou, however, a singer from Taiwan, led to his Chinese style rap in late 1990s. Jay's success probably is due to his productive songs and refreshingly different from the usual pop music at that period. To

Characteristics of the Rap of China
The

Chinese Mandarin Must Be the Only Language for Performance
If we look at the implications of linguistic choices in popular music, then the question of language choice probably is a crucial part of musical experience.
Berger and Carroll note: [N]ative languages or regional dialects may be the iconic of the colonized people or marginalized groups that speak them; songs set in such languages may function as a powerful affirmation of identity for their singer or listeners. (2003, p.vix) [13] Observing the linguistic choices made by rappers on the Rap of China, I find a truly restrictive reality. Languages other than Chinese are used by some rappers who, for some reasons, have been living or are currently living abroad. This is the case of Al Rocco, who wrote and sang in English. However, he was out of the game in the first round. The choice of using Chinese is explained by judges in various ways. For Zhang Zhenyue 4 Chinese rap has the role of bringing young people and the language together. "His rap is all in English, but now we are in China". The case of Al Rocco implicates that Chinese in China places an emphasis above other categorical order of languages, and by its very existence. This implication argues that, in a social context as that of contemporary China, rapping in Chinese is a desired and conscious choice, a choice that is always highlighted.
Al Rocco described his linguistic choice as a natural event after the game: "I'm learning… and I've tried to sing a bit Chinese in my music, but it doesn't fit the show… at the end of it, it's not a real hip-hop". Al Rocco's words hint that the Rap of China released an act of resistance to the global-based rap.

Lyrics: For Diss or for Self-Expression?
For the purpose of self-expression in Hip-Hop, lyrics not only claim the viewpoint of the narrator, but also present the artist's attitude, individualism, and critique (Costello and Wallace, 2009 [14]; Fabbri, 1982 [15]). In this sense, the analysis of the content of the lyrics can be an ideal method to find out the complex relationship between mainstream Hip-Hop and its specificities. In the Rap of China, the competition shows a frequent "diss" as well. Ma Siwei, a member of Higher Brother (from Chendu) and Gai (from Chongqin) are both from Sichuan province in China. During their battles, they used homophonic ways to diss each other. For instance, Ma wrote a song Gai Ai (You Deserve It), using Chendu dialect to imply his satirical attitude towards Gai's music, and Gai sang a Zhan Ma Dao (The Knife to Kill the Horse) to fight back, by using his Chongqing dialect.
Besides a dialectic diss, in Gai's "Only Listen to My Songs", he also attacked those who he considered as fake rappers by singing the following: Siwei, present a theme as similar as "self-expression" in the programme, no matter expressing with dialects or expressing with lyric styles.
Other types of the lyric such as "story-telling," the traditions and the music of being, take Xiao Qinglong and Hui Zi, their co-worked "Time" was questioned about its melody sounding like an ordinary pop music, and lacked of the function of the diss by netizens. In the interview afterwards, Hui Zi said:

Conclusions
According to Tony  The Rap of China leads me to reflect on how Chinese rappers related to the concepts such as aggressive, the value of language, regional price and the sense of belonging. However, the translation of these concepts from their assumed origins signifies a moment in which they are "modified" by the Chinese contexts.
On the Rap of China, every rapper, it seems, came in with pride in their work, by declaring that their only aim is to win. The "diss" phenomena, I argue, may consider as similar as "ego", expressing contestants' own ideas and aggressive attitude, but it is given an idea that such expression in the show is mostly for fun, fame and public attention, and is hard to reach to political rebellion.
Additionally, Chinese and local dialects used as privileged languages imply that rap, or Chinese rappers are customed to staying in a localized cultural group in general; though this may lead to their far-reaching a transnational Hip-Hop community, the need to connote it locally, having emphasized the local history, traditions and cultural roots is in particular.
Furthermore, as I argued in the above section, fandom is the site for young people (Grossberg, 1992) [16] in China. In other words, judges and those rising rappers have, to some extent, succeeded in satisfying the desires of young audiences. Through their passion following Kris Wu, their expressions and comments on rappers, their support or diss on the programme, young fans turned out to be a powerful social force accelerating the popularity of the Rap of China.

Conflicts of Interest
The author declares no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.