text | Linghu Boguang
Some time ago, I believe many netizens have seen a piece of news, that is, the "Chengdu Disney" incident.
Chengdu Disney is not really Disney, but a fitness equipment court downstairs in a residential area in Yulin Qixiang, Chengdu. It became famous overnight due to the song "Thank God, Thank God" by rapper Nomi. There is a line in it called " "Xie Di, I want to diss you", then the homophone became Xie Di Disney, and finally Chengdu Disney.
The key is that somehow it became popular, then became a hot search, and then became a check-in point sought after by a large number of young people. It later caused a disturbance to the public, and netizens gave mixed reviews. Anyway, more than ten days have passed. Like any domestic Internet hot spot, the hot spot has almost passed.
However, I personally have two views on this incident. The first is that there are quite a lot of young people in China who have money, leisure, food and nothing to do; the second is the popularity of "Chengdu Disney" Behind the scenes, netizens' evaluation of rap may be a little lower.
I don’t know if you have noticed one thing. The new era of Chinese rap started in 2017 on "China Has Hip Hop". At that time, Fanfan was still a mentor. Memes such as "skr" and "skr" of Fanfanfan became popular on the Internet. In the first season, contestants like gai and pg1 Wait for rappers to become famous as well (the ones listed have a high probability of getting into trouble, as good as Fanfan, Fengfeng, Shuangzi and other traffic stars). The second and third seasons of
followed and many rap variety music shows in the same period, including the idol group talent show that later emerged in China, may have been based on Korean idols. This rap is an important technique among boy groups and female groups. So rap became an indispensable item until "Youth With You 2" during the epidemic period.
Were rap memes like "light yellow long skirt, fluffy hair" popular at that time?
We all know what happened later. Idol music talent shows were controlled. The result was that idol programs should be regulated. As a result, Chinese hip-hop music variety shows are no longer viable, and rap music seems to be no longer viable either. There are still music programs, and there are many outstanding works in the music industry rankings every year, but everyone has noticed that there are not, and it seems that rap is no longer popular among the public.
Overnight, Chinese hip-hop stopped being popular? There are probably two or three important reasons why
popular music and market business are deeply bound. There are probably two or three important reasons why Chinese hip-hop music in the new era has developed to what it is now.
1. Chinese hip-hop has undergone reforms in Jay Chou's era, but Zhou Wang Taolin's generation did not play hip-hop, but rap elements. Speaking in human terms, it is similar to the styles in hip-hop songs such as old school, new school, trap rap, jazz rap, etc. Jay Chou's generation mainly borrowed rap elements, and the music styles were mainly rb, rock, new Chinese style and fusion style.
The Chinese rap style familiar to Chinese-speaking audiences stayed there. Later, hip-hop was introduced with the style of foreign pop music. We know that there is a big difference between alphabetic characters and square characters. One word in alphabetic characters has multiple sounds, while Chinese characters have one sound. Just one word.
Rap requires singers to sing at a higher speed. In the same time period and the same beat, the so-called Chinese rap naturally carries more information than alphabetic rap (alphabetic rap can be sung for a long paragraph) It is just saying one sentence. At this time, the Chinese rap may have said two or three sentences (it may also be a lengthy sentence)).
This will lead to two problems. For creators, it is very difficult to create high-quality Chinese rap with a large number of words (rap does not only have rhymes, but now many so-called raps seem to only have rhymes). Secondly, for the audience, The fast and numerous lyrics are actually very difficult to understand.
Moreover, this kind of rap is very different from the way people usually speak when singing lyrics. The problem this shows is that foreign rap is not able to adapt to Chinese or the expression of this one-syllable, one-character language. The correct method should be to slow down the speaking speed of rapping, and when rapping, we should consider the state of people's normal speech and make the audience understand it with their naked ears without the help of other tools.
2. This leads to the fact that Chinese hip-hop in the new era ignores melody and lyrics.
Melody. Chinese audiences like beautiful and simple ones. For example, Jay Chou's "Nocturne" is very typical. The arrangement was also very good in Chinese music at that time. , Many rap song melodies are now routines, and the production and arrangement are industrially copied. They sound no different from European and American hip-hop.
Because rap needs to pursue flow, freestyle and the aggression of the black culture behind it, this music style itself emphasizes rhythm but not melody, and emphasizes musicians but not production (Europe and the United States are still very good). Many Chinese musicians do not Heavy on melodies, hooks, arrangements and production.
I didn’t understand it before, but then I listened to more songs and got to know domestic musicians to a certain extent. found that many hip-hop music songs do not need to be written. The arrangement can be done casually, just download beat. Anyway, rap pursues human voices for speaking, rhythm, and dissing, which completely goes against the aesthetic habits of Chinese-speaking audiences.
The key point is that Chinese people attach great importance to lyrics, which completely ignores the importance of lyrics. No matter what kind of pop music it is, lyrics are very important. A good melody or arrangement can make a song good, but it cannot make a song listenable or even passed down.
Because compared to the complex emotions that words can carry, the emotions that musical notes can express require certain aesthetic training.
Of course, there are two reasons why we don’t pay attention to lyrics. The first is the rise of short video music. People have access to too many music in terms of quantity and variety. It doesn’t actually matter whether you can listen to the songs or not. Because from the perspective of demand, people don’t want to listen to a song completely from any channel, they just want it to sound good.
The second one is that when people hear the melody, they just think it is pleasant to the ears for a moment. This leads to the lyrics being gradually ignored. Some people find that even if the lyrics are unclear or weird, it does not prevent the melody from being pleasant. , and the overall quality of the song was overlooked.
The problem is that Chinese hip-hop now relies on human voices rather than good melodies, which is completely contrary to the norm. Compared with
and Jay Chou? In the new era of Chinese hip-hop, why is there no "king of superstars"
The third point is also the most important point. In addition to the main promotion of capital at the time, overwhelming publicity and the characteristics of the Internet, it is easy to become popular at every turn.
I believe many people have also guessed that behind hip-hop is black street culture, which is inherently contrary to local Chinese culture. This is also different from the criticism of the original era of rock and roll. When we talk about hip-hop, it means street gangsters, uneducated and unskilled, not doing their jobs properly, etc.
Music is not a completely perceptual thing. It belongs to a type of art. Since it belongs to art, it has certain rules. As long as it meets certain rules and constraints, it can be used for statistical analysis.
Human psychological state is completely independent of time, space and environment. How is this possible? Why do so many popular songs use canon chords, and why is there such a concept as a saliva song? I think whether a song sounds good or bad depends entirely on cultural factors.
To a certain extent, everyone has a disdain for certain music. The chain of contempt for music and any chain of contempt have the same logic.
For example, it is also science fiction. Why do Chinese audiences like to mock space operas, but prefer hard science fiction? The reason is that the productivity liberation brought about by science in the feudal era of modern China has exploded. After entering the modern era, if you dress up as science fiction and engage in classical romance, we will think it is fake and a bit too ridiculous.
In the final analysis, hip-hop’s experience in China is that it is essentially still acclimated. At least the hip-hop musicians in the new era are not as good as Zhou Wang Taolin’s generation at the level of reform, at least at the public level, and at least their rap music audience is indeed higher. Much more, much more popular.
When the public thinks that hip-hop is just gangsters, uneducated and unskilled, it is just a joke for fun.
Why is gai considered the most popular among this group of hip-hop musicians from a public perspective? The reason is that his Jianghu rap is indeed closer to Chinese culture, but in the early days, "Super Society" by Chongqing Street Sluts was criticized, and people immediately took the song off the shelves. This is the domestic cultural environment.
It’s not very positive when it’s popular. People, all they pursue is fame and wealth. So people in this industry, if you have some pursuit, maybe you don’t want to become popular in this way. Just like this "Disney" incident, maybe the singer Nomi should be quite happy, after all, black and red are also red.
But for Xie Di, his mood may be a bit indescribable: these people are really boring.
Finally, music is a perceptual thing after all. It will be affected by the social environment, cultural atmosphere, and people's psychological factors at the time. The environment will affect people's feelings.
When we are under pressure in life and worry about our livelihood all day long, no matter how good the song is, we will not have a good feeling unless it just fits your mood at that time. But after a period of time, you enter another In this state of mind, a song that was pleasant to you at first may sound unpleasant to you, and a song that was unpleasant to you at first may sound pleasant to you.
This all depends on psychological factors, and people's hearts will be affected by the environment, so the creators must adapt to the social environment at that time when creating. Therefore, some music does not conform to the social environment at that time and does not conform to people's inner feelings at that time, but This may not be the case in the future. This is also the reason why some works of art were not famous at the time, but suddenly became very popular at a certain point in time.
The problem of Chinese hip-hop in the new era is still very obvious. Many young people do not need to go online to have fun.
After all, times are completely different now. China's modernization has gone very deep, and there is no need to use just one system for evaluation. Just like Xianxia has long ceased to save the common people and perform chivalrous acts of justice. Starting from "The Strange Fairy", young people like to "go crazy". Culture exists and can be popular, and it still has its soil.
As for whether hip-hop will become popular among the people again, it depends on how musicians can create songs that more people like. If it fails to do this, it will always be like this, and may even continue to decline.
Many times, stereotypes are just one-sided perceptions under given conditions, but it is up to you to break this perception, not the public. After all, they only like to have fun, doesn’t Chengdu Disney?
