Gem old uncle Parker disses the strange elephant! What chaos is happening in the rap circle?

With the launch of the first episode of the iQiyi video "China's New Rap Showdown", rap culture has become more popular in the mainstream media.

In addition to OGs such as Hot Dog Sausage, GAI, and Sheng Yu who have established their status in the industry, there are many contestants such as Capper and Zhang Yanqi who can be called YoungBlood as "league (brand) initiators" . On the other hand, Station B, which has been "recruiting" for a while, has opened the registration channel for the second season of "Rap New Generation" and is currently recording.

Even so, after experiencing two rap variety shows, the Chinese rap circle is now facing a rather embarrassing situation: rap has entered its fifth year of popularity, and familiar faces are "returning" far more than newcomers. Outcrop.

But outside of variety shows, as rap has gradually come to the surface, various colleges and universities that have become the "post-00s world" have established rap clubs with their own characteristics, creating a Cypher craze in colleges and universities. It can be said that college rap is nothing new.

In 2017, iQiyi Video released "China Has Hip Hop", announcing that it would bring this subculture to the world, creating a "rap craze" with user reviews and popularity soaring at the same time. At that time, it was still growing underground, but under irrigation it could be said to "destroy the seedlings and encourage them to grow". Since then, iQiyi Video has produced a redesigned "China's New Rap" series and "Youth Rap Project", and iQiyi has also launched "Rap Listen to Me", and Station B has also launched "Rap Listen to Me" with the participation of Yan Min. Presented the only high-scoring rap variety show - "Rap New Generation" with a Douban Movie rating of 9.1.

However, with the "Water Dream" year after year, rap variety shows are like idol talent show variety shows, full of "braised pork" and unable to be updated, and the overall user evaluation attention And the discussion topics are as good as the previous year. For example, "New Generation of Rap" won high user ratings, but in the same year, the user rating of "New Rap of China" was only 4.4 points, and the number of clicks was twice that of the former; "Listen to Me, Rap" was also "confusing" No one cared about it, so the winner of the second season rushed to this year's "China's New Rap Showdown", which even made many contestants and netizens a little embarrassed.

Moreover, rap is also facing a chain reaction brought about by increased verification and control both underground and above ground. While rap shows are rejecting diss and vulgar content, underground events where freestyle is the soul of impromptu performances have also been called off for rectification. For example, "Eight Miles Underground" was suspended several times from 2018 to 2019 due to issues with freestyle's offensive wording. The event was cancelled, and since then it was renamed the Eight Mile, and the Freestyle event was changed to a writing event, and its glory was no longer the same.

In addition, professional rappers are slowly becoming stars. Since its development, rap, a segmented track, has built a complete business operation model and is able to operate with ease at the level of industrial development and operation. After gaining a certain amount of attention, rappers began to lay out overall artist management. Whether it was fans or business reception, they were good at choosing artist companies with regular delivery to manage. For example, Jiang Yunsheng, a top figure in the rap circle, signed a contract with the group's Shaocheng Era, which includes Zhang Bichen, Liang Bo, and Chen Xuening. It is worth mentioning that the signing party is not the fourth song of the group's rap brand.

However, the market is overheated, and differences between brands and celebrities, as well as overall planning, are still unfolding among rappers. For example, Doggie, a rapper from "New Generation of Rap", had a contract termination with his former brand Wonderful Brainwave due to differences and work issues. Now he has signed a contract with Longtao Entertainment, a company owned by Huang Zitao. In addition, changes in the status and living conditions of rappers have also caused many rappers to enter their comfort zone. Under the premise of endless personal negativity, writing interruptions have also triggered objections to self-improvement or plagiarism. Excellent works are rare no matter how rare they are.

As rappers become stars, the rap sales market has gradually shifted from being dominated by enthusiasts to becoming a fan circle.

The most obvious manifestation is that in the rap circle, there are behaviors such as criticizing, voting, fan-versus-fan duels, and bullying. For example, Jiang Yunsheng’s fan club has a set of “thinking brain maps” that control criticism. The popularity of livehouse and concert tickets, as well as the high-priced ticket scalpers, and the fact that rapper performance tickets are generally higher than those in the band industry, have all been affected by the fandom of the rap circle to a certain extent.

According to the "2021 Chinese Rap Music White Paper" released by iiMedia, the actor who received more brand endorsements and advertising last year was the acting rapper Gui, who was born in "Idol Producer". *** There are 33 or more, and there are 15 commercial performances; followed by Jiang Yunsheng, Ma Siwei, and GAI, there are 5 advertisements and 8 commercial performances.

It can be seen that in the five years since it bloomed from the ground to the ground, rap culture and art have also developed under pain. But at the same time, it is inevitable that there will be continuous difficulties that no industry can avoid, and there is an urgent need for new forces that have not been "beaten" by the market to introduce vitality.

On the one hand, college rap is gradually favored by music comprehensive service platforms. For example, in 2018, "China New Rap" began to hold qualifying competitions in colleges and universities, transporting college students to participate in the competition; but last year, the "Young Rap Project" even set the age requirement at 18-24 years old to discover new rap talents born in the 2000s. , most of whom are current students.

It’s just that although there is support for music and entertainment, because college students are basically ordinary fresh faces, the popularity is limited, and it is a waste in terms of clicks and discussions. Still small. As for Capper, the champion of "Young Rap Project", although he has carried the banner of post-2000 rap, his market influence still needs to be strengthened, and he has not achieved the popularity of past rap champions.

On the other hand, after the "Operation Qinglang", music websites and underground rap competitions also broke away from the original form of music comprehensives and found effective channels to cooperate in holding rap competitions for college students. Beginning in 2020, QQ Music and 8km Underground jointly organized events such as the "College Rap Open", Jinzi Opera, NEWCALL National College Rap Open, TurnUP Rap Competition, etc., which also added a beneficial traffic pool for newcomers to college rap. . The music producer planning of the music website and the music area UP master support plan of Station B have brought another positive way for college rap to be exposed.

At the same time, a large number of rap brands have also launched plans to find new people to fill their positions, and have set their sights on various universities to provide system shaping. For example, Xi Yuan, who participated in the variety show "Girls Are Afraid of Darkness", was discovered by the brand YellowGang as a new generation of female rapper as a post-00s school student in Shanghai.

Under this condition, the post-00 generation has also become the backbone of rap writing. According to the "Chinese Rap Music Report" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") released by NetEase Music, the post-00 generation Chinese rap music producers account for more than three-quarters. Specifically, in 2018, Peking University was the first to establish the "Wuxu Rap Club", and Tsinghua University attracted attention with a national rap song "Cypher" "Shui Mu Dao" on the hot search list.

Starting from 2019, rap club activities began to take place in universities such as Wuhan University and Nanjing University, and they will usher in a blowout period in 2020. There are works from 985 and 211 schools to professional universities. According to B According to incomplete statistics from the website UP owner Eraifu, about 60 Cypher works from colleges and universities were published that year.

Most of this new generation of college rappers have achieved success in everything from music scores to MV production, and their skills are no less than those of professional rappers. For example, the Cypher work released by Wuhan University of Communication in 2020 was praised by rapper AThree in the 2021 NEWCALL behind-the-scenes variety show "Hi After School" as "this is the real baseline."

But in terms of theme and style, college rappers also break the prejudice of "technical school rap" and focus on "cultural and artistic rap".

According to the "Report", the discussion of superficial fame and fortune topics such as money and luxury cars in post-00s rap has significantly decreased, while the content of national rhyme rap and its content about dreams, social issues, school life, women, etc. has increased, and the theme style has become more It is diverse, the specific content is also more diverse, and it also has strong regional characteristics.

Among them, there are also a group of top college rappers who mainly do Wordplay. For example, the Cypher book "Yueluo Shengheng" published by Wuhan University in 2020 takes the COVID-19 epidemic as the background and integrates the discussion of institutions, society and people. Cypher's book "Hot" by the National University of Defense Technology focuses on the ambitions and ideals of military cadets.

Overseas Chinese post-00s college students are also active in foreign rap circles and have a certain audience. For example, Spylent, an American student with 572,000 fans on Station B, just last year It occupies a place in rap, the music vertical field with the most clicks on Bilibili.

In general, it can be seen that post-00 college rap has an atmosphere that is no less than that of the professional rap circle. The addition of this new force also constitutes a virtuous cycle of green ecology to a certain extent, promoting rap The field continues to move forward.