A Chinese flavour of rap music is flourishing as emerging musicians find their voices

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. Speculation went wild, as fans worried that this was the end for hip-hop in China. Some media labelled it a ban. Rap had just experienced a banner year in the country, with a hit competition-format TV show minting new stars and introducing them to a population of 1.4 billion people. Loading YouTube content Rappers accustomed to operating on little money and performing in small bars became household names. The announcement from censors came at the peak of that frenzy. A silence descended, and for months no rappers appeared on the dozens of variety shows and singing competitions on Chinese TV. But by the end of that year, everything was back in full swing. “Hip-hop was too popular,” says Nathanel Amar, a Chinese pop culture researcher at the French Centre for Research on Contemporary China. “They couldn’t censor the whole genre.” What had looked like the end for Chinese hip-hop was just...