My problem with the New York Times article on the hip hop scene in China (discussed here), is that there's no reason for that article now. There is no sudden love of the music (despite hiphop.cn site views) or anything in 2009 that's popping off that wasn't before. More top acts are coming to China, but the audience is almost exclusively expat (just look at the Roots, Kanye, and Talib shows). There hasn't been a sudden large number of hip hop clubs that have opened up, or live local shows going down, there aren't that many underground ciphers or battles that are going on either. Yes, the clothing has been appropriated and the dancing is very popular, but the music is still just a tiny niche.
Let's first get some things straightened out, hip hop contains four elements: graffiti, break dancing, MCing, and DJing. This is something often forgotten or overlooked by those outside the community, all of them are equally important and there's a big difference between that and rap music.
To be honest, all 4 elements have not even come close to entry in China and its going to be a long time before that changes. Dancing came in first and is unbelievably popular here, with tons of crews even in far flung 3rd tier cities and mainstream classes at gyms and even on tv. In Korea, the dancing came with the music, and while the dancing popped off a lot faster, the music slowly caught up to where there are serious hip hop acts, but in China, we're still a long way from that. You do see some graffiti around town, but because of the strict nature of the police, almost all of it is sanctioned or more pop art than the raw tagging that goes on elsewhere (even in Hong Kong).
DJing is another problem, mainly caused by the difficulty of getting top records. Real DJ's use records and the only way to get them is by having them shipped from back home, making HK or Tokyo runs, or bringing them in whenever the DJ (or friends) return home. Most clubs don't even bother with real DJs, they just use computerized mixes or loops, though some "hip hop" clubs will put somebody who fits the "image" of a hip hop head behind a platform with 2 turntables and tell them to pretend to spin for an hour or two, good money if you can get it.
And finally to MCing, well...We're not there yet, we're nowhere near there. The problem, it seems, especially from reading some of the comments to another blogger, is that there is more a desire to make money than stay true to any art form. Groups that have made it "big" (you could mention Gongfu, but they even make Yin Sanr look gangster) do so with feel good, sometimes even pop, lyrics. There are some decent underground acts who've yet to sell out, but the difficulty is in keeping them together because there isn't a lot of money to be had. There are a lot of expats running around who are sometimes involved in the scene back home and trying to promote it here, some of them are highly skilled and doing a great service, others, well...not so much. There's also too much lack of confidence (perhaps that's the right way to say it?) in some artists to perform straight up hip hop music, all too often you get something more akin to Fred Durst-ian rock rap (but in part, that goes to the lack of influences and the difficulty of getting all kinds of hip hop in China).
Then there are the guys who come from government housing, poor families where both parents were laid off, where the father beat them and their mother, who come from failing schools and instead of rapping about this experience, they talk about "gats" and "ho's", although they've never held a gun and are probably still with their high school sweetheart. I'm not making this a call for conscious rappers or saying that they need to be political, not at all, but talk about your own experiences, you are ghetto, you don't need to pretend to be from the (US) "ghetto."
There is not enough diversity in influences, not enough DJ's who know how to scratch and mix, and far too many hangers on and its made the movement stagnant. The minor glimmers of hope you see from year to year quickly dry up and the scene just feels like its slowly lurching nowhere. The dancing has taken off, but it is already completely disconnected from the music. The clothing style is often more about pissing off one's parents than anything else and is so out of tune with current American hip hop style.
However, it's not all negative, there is some decent, pure hip hop if you dig for it. There are people who are serious about trying to make the scene grow and there are people who truly love the music and aren't just in it for the money. 2009's a tough year economically, but do what you can to support the real hip hop acts when they play live, drop some money on a real CD instead of downloads, hit up websites like hiphop.cn which are often doing a great service. The scene is paused, its in its infancy, but that doesn't mean it can't grow.
Showing posts with label hip hop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hip hop. Show all posts
2009/02/06
2009/01/28
Hater in the House, Part 1*
During the run up to last summer's Olympics, we ran a series called Bylines at Customs made up of all the stupid pronouncements made by good (and not so good) journos who came to Beijing looking for the "real" story. Journalists come to Beijing, see a small example of something, and want to blow it up into something larger. Often these stories are about making the Chinese seem "more like us", ie they eat fast food, just like us, they listen to such and such music, just like us or are cliches about contradictions in modern China. Stories that are almost completely false or without any real backing, like this waste of space on George Bush remaining popular in China, get printed because to the editor back in the US, it sounds good. To borrow from a Chinese saying, its the case of "the mountains are high and the editors are far away."
Therefore, when the New York Times ran a story last week on Chinese hip hop, it was a "stop the presses" moment here at Modern Lei Feng, almost enough to bring us out of our hibernation. Lots of phone calls back and forth and disbelief, but nobody bothering to pick up the pen. Perhaps its because we thought we dreamed the article, the idea of a burgeoning hip hop scene in China just made us laugh. Then we found this generally on point snark filled blog post about the story and realized we could no longer stay quiet (though his hip hop vs. rap note shows where he's coming from).
Jimmy Wang is generally a good reporter on China, perhaps this article was a case of not having enough material or already being on mental vacation due to the upcoming Chinese New Year holiday. It has all the signs of a hack "they're just like us" story by a Chinese first timer.
The article discusses how Q-Tip and Eminem (first record release: 1999) have been popular in China "since the 90s". Interesting. I defy you to find me 5 Chinese "hip hoppers" who know that Q-Tip isn't one of those things you stick in your ear, or even know what group he belonged to. It talks about hip hop clubs that opened "across the country" and yet the "hip hop clubs" in Beijing or Shanghai cater musically more to the tastes of suburban teens than any real hip hop heads. The article spends so much time building up the idea of hip hop in China, only to end with the reality that its still nothing more than a tiny niche.
While we have a lot of problems with the way the author puts things in the beginning of the article, like: "Over the last decade many students and working-class Chinese have been writing rap as a form of self-expression. Rougher and more rebellious than the well-scrubbed pop that floods the airwaves here," which is just wrong on so many different levels, the big problem is that this story is more expat rag fodder (and something they've been writing since 2001 or so), not the kind of august journalism one (should) expect from the New York Times.
As the saying goes, a picture speaks a thousand words, the main picture that accompanies the article shows 3 "rappers" surrounded by an almost exclusively white crowd with nary a Chinese face to be seen, so much for Chinese hip hop.
*Part 2 is coming soon, our own look at the hip hop scene in China
Therefore, when the New York Times ran a story last week on Chinese hip hop, it was a "stop the presses" moment here at Modern Lei Feng, almost enough to bring us out of our hibernation. Lots of phone calls back and forth and disbelief, but nobody bothering to pick up the pen. Perhaps its because we thought we dreamed the article, the idea of a burgeoning hip hop scene in China just made us laugh. Then we found this generally on point snark filled blog post about the story and realized we could no longer stay quiet (though his hip hop vs. rap note shows where he's coming from).
Jimmy Wang is generally a good reporter on China, perhaps this article was a case of not having enough material or already being on mental vacation due to the upcoming Chinese New Year holiday. It has all the signs of a hack "they're just like us" story by a Chinese first timer.
The article discusses how Q-Tip and Eminem (first record release: 1999) have been popular in China "since the 90s". Interesting. I defy you to find me 5 Chinese "hip hoppers" who know that Q-Tip isn't one of those things you stick in your ear, or even know what group he belonged to. It talks about hip hop clubs that opened "across the country" and yet the "hip hop clubs" in Beijing or Shanghai cater musically more to the tastes of suburban teens than any real hip hop heads. The article spends so much time building up the idea of hip hop in China, only to end with the reality that its still nothing more than a tiny niche.
While we have a lot of problems with the way the author puts things in the beginning of the article, like: "Over the last decade many students and working-class Chinese have been writing rap as a form of self-expression. Rougher and more rebellious than the well-scrubbed pop that floods the airwaves here," which is just wrong on so many different levels, the big problem is that this story is more expat rag fodder (and something they've been writing since 2001 or so), not the kind of august journalism one (should) expect from the New York Times.
As the saying goes, a picture speaks a thousand words, the main picture that accompanies the article shows 3 "rappers" surrounded by an almost exclusively white crowd with nary a Chinese face to be seen, so much for Chinese hip hop.
*Part 2 is coming soon, our own look at the hip hop scene in China
2008/11/10
Concert Review: Kanye West Lets Us Down
Multiple date/venue changes, check.
Crazy expensive tickets, check.
Change in opening act, check.
Title misnomer, check.
Short set, check.
Kanye West in Beijing, check.
It's been a week since Kanye came through Beijing to much fanfare and ended up disappointing most in attendance. I'm a big Kanye fan (does anybody do it better repping the Chi?), but a show that saw us hitting the bars by 10 and with the disappointing usage of the "Glow in the Dark" title, it was an absolute disappointment. Sure, we knew this not to be a true part of the "Glow in the Dark" tour, there would be no Rihanna, Lu Fiasco, and all the rest who were supporting him on US/Europe shows, but could we at least get the amazing stage setup that was offered in those other locations? This was a very pared down version of the show that cost more than tickets in the US did. Sure, Kanye came a long way and is one of the few hip hop acts to come to China, but why give China fans of his both a scaled back show and high prices? Why not go the extra mile? Why not do more to excite the hip hop masses in China, a scene that definitely could use some excitement?
Wake up, Mr. West! And wake up promoters! This is exactly what people were expecting, a half-assed version of a concert, which is why so many people stayed home, despite the attraction of having the Louis Vuitton don in our capital. Kanye, you could have done better than that, what happened to going all out all the time?
Crazy expensive tickets, check.
Change in opening act, check.
Title misnomer, check.
Short set, check.
Kanye West in Beijing, check.
It's been a week since Kanye came through Beijing to much fanfare and ended up disappointing most in attendance. I'm a big Kanye fan (does anybody do it better repping the Chi?), but a show that saw us hitting the bars by 10 and with the disappointing usage of the "Glow in the Dark" title, it was an absolute disappointment. Sure, we knew this not to be a true part of the "Glow in the Dark" tour, there would be no Rihanna, Lu Fiasco, and all the rest who were supporting him on US/Europe shows, but could we at least get the amazing stage setup that was offered in those other locations? This was a very pared down version of the show that cost more than tickets in the US did. Sure, Kanye came a long way and is one of the few hip hop acts to come to China, but why give China fans of his both a scaled back show and high prices? Why not go the extra mile? Why not do more to excite the hip hop masses in China, a scene that definitely could use some excitement?
Wake up, Mr. West! And wake up promoters! This is exactly what people were expecting, a half-assed version of a concert, which is why so many people stayed home, despite the attraction of having the Louis Vuitton don in our capital. Kanye, you could have done better than that, what happened to going all out all the time?
2008/10/23
Like A Rolling Stone
An interesting post on Silicon Hutong, that lifts heavily from an equally interesting post by Ed Peto, on the Chinese music scene. The conclusion of both seems to be that, any day now, there will start to be a move away from traditional saccharine Chinese pop songs and diversity will be the word of the day.
The reality would dictate otherwise, as access, habit, and peer pressure will continue to dictate things for years to come. Currently, a large indie, hip hop, and rock scene exists in Beijing, and to a lesser extent other cities, but there are very few people jumping on the bandwagon. Part of it is that a number of artists in these scenes insist on using English, thus pushing fans of these genres to focus away from domestic options and instead pick foreign ones. If they're singing in English anyways, why not listen to people who speak better English?
Yet the biggest issue is peer pressure and acceptance of something new and unusual. Play a Gong Fu or Joyside song for 10 Chinese youngsters and maybe 1 or 2 will be bouncing their head to it, the rest will just see it as strange and go back to blasting their Jay Chou or Cai Yilin megahits. Part of the attraction to these other genres is that it makes one different from everyone else. There has been a nascent rock scene in China for nearly 25 years and yet its never been able to go mainstream, despite huge crowds showing up to concerts of top foreign and Chinese acts. It is a rebellion against what your parents and everyone in your school is listening to, its an act of individualism in a country where individualism is frowned upon.
It is interesting as well that if a genre exists outside of pop in China, it is folk/ethnic music, with singers like Dao Lang (mentioned in the article) and Han Hong garnering a lot of popularity. This sort of "traditional" music is familiar and easy on the ears of all generations, thus making it more acceptable to all.
Chinese labels are looking for music that will have mass appeal in an extremely large, diverse country. Selling music to a subculture wouldn't be that hard as there is still a huge audience for it, but the choice always goes for music that is attractive to 10 million Chinese instead of 500,000. I find it so interesting how 21 year olds who weren't even born when Jackey Cheung (张学友）began his career will know every word to every one of his songs. Music is typically generational, but in China, it crosses generations as many songs today don't sound that much different than songs 20 years ago.
There will always be a market for Re-Tros, there will always be a market for CMCB, but they will never be mainstream and there will never be the same degree of acceptance of these subcultures as there is in the US or abroad. Just looking at Korean and Japanese music shows this, sure other genres have taken a small portion of the market (hip hop and rock, respectively), the majority of what is out there isn't very different from your everyday Mandopop tune.
The reality would dictate otherwise, as access, habit, and peer pressure will continue to dictate things for years to come. Currently, a large indie, hip hop, and rock scene exists in Beijing, and to a lesser extent other cities, but there are very few people jumping on the bandwagon. Part of it is that a number of artists in these scenes insist on using English, thus pushing fans of these genres to focus away from domestic options and instead pick foreign ones. If they're singing in English anyways, why not listen to people who speak better English?
Yet the biggest issue is peer pressure and acceptance of something new and unusual. Play a Gong Fu or Joyside song for 10 Chinese youngsters and maybe 1 or 2 will be bouncing their head to it, the rest will just see it as strange and go back to blasting their Jay Chou or Cai Yilin megahits. Part of the attraction to these other genres is that it makes one different from everyone else. There has been a nascent rock scene in China for nearly 25 years and yet its never been able to go mainstream, despite huge crowds showing up to concerts of top foreign and Chinese acts. It is a rebellion against what your parents and everyone in your school is listening to, its an act of individualism in a country where individualism is frowned upon.
It is interesting as well that if a genre exists outside of pop in China, it is folk/ethnic music, with singers like Dao Lang (mentioned in the article) and Han Hong garnering a lot of popularity. This sort of "traditional" music is familiar and easy on the ears of all generations, thus making it more acceptable to all.
Chinese labels are looking for music that will have mass appeal in an extremely large, diverse country. Selling music to a subculture wouldn't be that hard as there is still a huge audience for it, but the choice always goes for music that is attractive to 10 million Chinese instead of 500,000. I find it so interesting how 21 year olds who weren't even born when Jackey Cheung (张学友）began his career will know every word to every one of his songs. Music is typically generational, but in China, it crosses generations as many songs today don't sound that much different than songs 20 years ago.
There will always be a market for Re-Tros, there will always be a market for CMCB, but they will never be mainstream and there will never be the same degree of acceptance of these subcultures as there is in the US or abroad. Just looking at Korean and Japanese music shows this, sure other genres have taken a small portion of the market (hip hop and rock, respectively), the majority of what is out there isn't very different from your everyday Mandopop tune.
2008/06/25
Expat Crap
For the past 10 years or so, I've skimmed through the expat magazines and for the most part, very quickly throw them out. It's like Playboy, you don't get it for the articles, its just for the events listing/restaurant openings (though there are those who believe if you need these mags to find out about restaurant openings, you aren't cool enough).
City Weekend's article on "Turf Wars" this month was equal parts laughable and offensive. It's the kind of "humor" you'd expect from white bread high school students/frat boys who have little or no understanding of the inner city. They also seem to fail to understand very much about expats in China, but that's beside the point.
The article attempted to divide up the entire expat population in Beijing into 5 small categories, a tough prospect, but not so bad. The problem is their appropriation of gang names (Bloodz, Latin Kings) as an attempt to be funny and some strange looking ABC flashing a "gang sign" and attempting to mimic black slang. This is the print equivalent of a frat holding a "player's ball". It is unfortunately the image that too many white Americans, who have never had any contact with African Americans, imagine black culture to be. This is like the dolt who writes the Shanghai nightlife newsletter who refused to actually call Shanghai "Shanghai" and instead wanted to come up with some kind of "hip hop" term to refer to it as. Please!
You could do a funny article on the (lack of) diversity among US/Canadian/Aussie expats (beyond that, it gets dicey) without the usage of that language, which makes it offensive and downright stupid. Anyways, I'm not a fan of the expat rags to begin with, with the possible exception of Time Out and again, the main thing is the event listings. For everything else, the expat magazines only seem to serve a community of expats who don't know any Chinese people and only hang around with other expats.
Rant over.
City Weekend's article on "Turf Wars" this month was equal parts laughable and offensive. It's the kind of "humor" you'd expect from white bread high school students/frat boys who have little or no understanding of the inner city. They also seem to fail to understand very much about expats in China, but that's beside the point.
The article attempted to divide up the entire expat population in Beijing into 5 small categories, a tough prospect, but not so bad. The problem is their appropriation of gang names (Bloodz, Latin Kings) as an attempt to be funny and some strange looking ABC flashing a "gang sign" and attempting to mimic black slang. This is the print equivalent of a frat holding a "player's ball". It is unfortunately the image that too many white Americans, who have never had any contact with African Americans, imagine black culture to be. This is like the dolt who writes the Shanghai nightlife newsletter who refused to actually call Shanghai "Shanghai" and instead wanted to come up with some kind of "hip hop" term to refer to it as. Please!
You could do a funny article on the (lack of) diversity among US/Canadian/Aussie expats (beyond that, it gets dicey) without the usage of that language, which makes it offensive and downright stupid. Anyways, I'm not a fan of the expat rags to begin with, with the possible exception of Time Out and again, the main thing is the event listings. For everything else, the expat magazines only seem to serve a community of expats who don't know any Chinese people and only hang around with other expats.
Rant over.
2008/01/14
A Little Around The Web Action For Ya...
First off, the Yilishen tale has finally been picked up by a US newspaper (hat tip to Granite Studio). The story had everything US papers usually love writing about when it comes to China: government corruption, large worker protests, scandal, working people getting fleeced by big business, celebrity, ants(?). However, the Global Voices blog had a great writeup summarizing Chinese blogs almost 2 months ago that told me everything the LA Times story did (and more) and included pictures. US media has almost completely ignored the story, beyond a brief writeup in Reuters (the UK did a better job) as far as I've seen, despite this being called the "perfect China story." The blog coverage in late November of this story and the subsequent lag before traditional media started picking up the story is yet another demonstration of how blogs are, in some cases, replacing traditional media, or at least usurping their territory.
Next we have Imagethief on plastic bags. I agree that the oft discussed recent government measure is a step in the right direction, at least PR-wise, but I doubt it will lead to much change when it takes effect. Although one only hopes it causes the public to pay attention to the issue and possibly at least lead some individuals to consider reusable shopping bags.
The NY Times/IHT carried an article about poverty in China yesterday. It doesn't say much of anything new, but I have a feeling that we'll be seeing many of these articles in the leadup to the Olympics as they provide such great contrast to articles like the Tim Johnson article on nouveau riche spending. I do think the most interesting point from the article is the fact that much of the government's poverty relief programs have been focused on development in western China and little has been done to help the interior provinces that are struggling with the dual problems of large migration to the cities and lack of opportunity/markets at home.
Finally, a China Daily story on Mojo. Despite my regular travels to Shanghai and the music scene there, I've yet to meet the man. Though I know there are some haters out there, I respect anyone trying to bring the message of real hip hop to the Chinese masses, instead of the overly commercial crap that regularly gets played over here. His pushing that the "next big thing in China" will be hip hop is another of those tired plaudits that seem to be popping up in a number of the articles I'm looking at today. It would be great to see, but its going to take time, Common came over and was basically ignored, the Roots had a largely Western audience, and Talib's show didn't get the love it should have. Anyways, to take a closer look at the man called Mojo, you can check out his blog.
2007/04/12
The Imus Thing...
Its not something I was going to bring up as it has little if anything to do with this blog, it is not at all China related and his 2 week suspension seemed like it would be the end of things, but now the guy, who is truly a legend, has been fired and will probably never work in radio again. I can understand people being angry about what he said, but I don't understand why the racial rabblerouser preachers Jackson and Sharpton had to step in, both of them have their own extremely checkered past, which for whatever reason the black community (and basically everyone else) ignores. That sort of thing is what I expect from Jackson, but I like Rev Al and feel bad that he'd do this just to get his name in the papers (what other motivation could he have?). He's never going to be president, but his brand of "straight talk" made McCain look like any other politician in 2004. The Rev really could be a leader in the Democratic party if he gave up this kind of shit.
Imus has been in the radio game forever and can probably be credited, more than anyone else, with making William Jefferson Clinton the President of the United States in '92, again, the man's a legend. What he said was wrong, there's no getting around that, though a lot of the whole debate is lost on people. His statements mirror prejudices/fears/insecurities that have long existed among African American women and are understandably offensive to the black community as a whole.
Off Wing Opinion, one of my favorite hockey blogs, had an interesting offering from Jason Whitlock that almost led me to blog on the topic. Witlock had this to say:
The entire article is well worth your time and can be found here. As I said, I was going to sit out this discussion, but then I saw a quote from Snoop Dogg on the fat, pink haired freak's website. Snoop, who regularly raps about "bitches" and ho's" had this to say:
This is the definition of a double standard, but nobody cares. The white a&r's and presidents of record labels don't care because its bringing in the money, the rappers don't care because its bringing in the money, but why is it okay? Why is it wrong for Imus to say this on the am dial when you can here so many worse insults against black women on the fm side of the dial?
Imus has been in the radio game forever and can probably be credited, more than anyone else, with making William Jefferson Clinton the President of the United States in '92, again, the man's a legend. What he said was wrong, there's no getting around that, though a lot of the whole debate is lost on people. His statements mirror prejudices/fears/insecurities that have long existed among African American women and are understandably offensive to the black community as a whole.
Off Wing Opinion, one of my favorite hockey blogs, had an interesting offering from Jason Whitlock that almost led me to blog on the topic. Witlock had this to say:
While we’re fixated on a bad joke cracked by an irrelevant, bad shock jock, I’m sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent’s or Snoop Dogg’s or Young Jeezy’s latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and hos.
I ain’t saying Jesse, Al and Vivian are gold-diggas, but they don’t have the heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the real black-folk killas.
The entire article is well worth your time and can be found here. As I said, I was going to sit out this discussion, but then I saw a quote from Snoop Dogg on the fat, pink haired freak's website. Snoop, who regularly raps about "bitches" and ho's" had this to say:
"It's a completely different scenario. (Rappers) are not talking about no collegiate basketball girls who have made it to the next level in education and sports. We're talking about hoes that's in the 'hood that ain't doing shit, that's trying to get a nigga for his money. These are two separate things. First of all, we ain't no old-ass white men that sit up on MSNBC going hard on black girls. We are rappers that have these songs coming from our minds and our souls that are relevant to what we feel. I will not let them muthafuckas say we are in the same league as him. Kick him off the air forever."Are. You. Serious? I love hip hop and will defend it to my death (or its death if you don't believe Nas that its already dead). There are a lot of really good, positive rappers out there who have a message that society should be hearing. Hip hop still serves as "Black people's CNN" like Chuck D said, but there is so much crap out there that, as Whitlock points out, is so much more insulting to black women. Snoop, I'm not putting you in the same league as Imus, you and your brethren are clearly in a league of your own. If you, being a black man, are able to make your living by "going hard" on black girls record after record, why can't Imus make one statement, especially because he at least makes a distinction, one that is never clear in Snoop's songs.
This is the definition of a double standard, but nobody cares. The white a&r's and presidents of record labels don't care because its bringing in the money, the rappers don't care because its bringing in the money, but why is it okay? Why is it wrong for Imus to say this on the am dial when you can here so many worse insults against black women on the fm side of the dial?
2007/03/18
Sunday Photo Thread - Blackhawks Love/Hate Edition
Some random pictures taken over the past few days:
The Roots in concert, always an unbelievable show and well worth your money, even if you aren't a big fan of hip hop, its still worth it, they transcend any one genre label. Plus, they put on a great set (last nights they were on stage for over 2 hours).
blurred picture of the classic Chicago Theatre sign and the El station (looking south down State Street)
is it a bad photograph or possibly art?
For whatever reason (probably because I'm part Russian), I've long been a fan of Russian hockey players (Bure, Mogilny, and now Ovie), but I've had an obsession with the obscure Russian players of the Blackhawks (Krivokrasov, Yakubov, and this year, Arkhie).
For a man whose career NHL stats look like this:
Games - 4
Goals - 0
Assists - 0
Points - 0
Penalty Minutes - 72
Shots - 0
+/- - -3
David Koci is VERY flexible!
Savvy surely dropping some wisdom on his young charges
HAVLAT!
What can I say? One of the only bright spots to this season...
The Roots in concert, always an unbelievable show and well worth your money, even if you aren't a big fan of hip hop, its still worth it, they transcend any one genre label. Plus, they put on a great set (last nights they were on stage for over 2 hours).
blurred picture of the classic Chicago Theatre sign and the El station (looking south down State Street)
is it a bad photograph or possibly art?
For whatever reason (probably because I'm part Russian), I've long been a fan of Russian hockey players (Bure, Mogilny, and now Ovie), but I've had an obsession with the obscure Russian players of the Blackhawks (Krivokrasov, Yakubov, and this year, Arkhie).
For a man whose career NHL stats look like this:Games - 4
Goals - 0
Assists - 0
Points - 0
Penalty Minutes - 72
Shots - 0
+/- - -3
David Koci is VERY flexible!
Savvy surely dropping some wisdom on his young charges
HAVLAT!What can I say? One of the only bright spots to this season...
2007/03/08
Hip Hop China 1 - Gong Fu
No, not that kind of Gongfu (the fighting or the restaurant)...This one:
Hip hop China sounds like an oxymoron and, to be honest, it really is. There are a lot of message boards and a ton of people who are talking about hip hop on the web, but very few are actually doing it. Those that are tend to focus on the dancing more than anything, the other 3 elements get tossed by the wayside. Most likely, as with rock music, the Chinese language and hip hop simply don't mix.
Gong Fu, from Tianjin, was one of the first to break out onto the mainstream scene in China with a record called 冲动 (Impulse) a few years back. Yeah, so despite my promises of new music, we're talking about stuff from 2005 or so and not from yesterday. While the state of hip hop in China and my love for hip hop would both make reasonable post topics, those will be saved for another day, let's get right into the music.
功夫 － 日落 ： Gongfu - Sunset
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