Remembering Expat Rapper Jackson Turner
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Jackson Turner
Name: Jackson Turner (aka Emcee Heretic)
Established: 2014
Record(s): 2 full-length + 1 EP
Label(s): Taihe Music Group, Pantheon Elite Records, Digital Empire Records
Influences: Nas, Otis Redding, Eminem, Big Pun, Sizzla
Stream: Bandcamp, YouTube, SoundcloudEditor’s Note: Jackson Turner passed away on Jul 19, 2020. Our deepest condolences go out to his family, friends, collaborators, fans, and anyone else who was touched by his music.
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Who is he: For anyone who was hanging around Beijing’s hip-hop scene in the early-00s, Jackson Turner is probably a familiar name. After being estranged from his mother, getting into some trouble as a kid, and witnessing a fair share of violence around his native Brooklyn, the 19-year-old decided it was time to steer his life in a new direction, and thus took advantage of an exchange program between the University of Buffalo in New York – where he was studying at the time – and Capital Normal University. Once he had completed his Chinese language studies, the rapper-turned-scholar enrolled at Peking University, where he pursued a master’s degree in history and philosophy. While he wasn’t in the classroom, however, Turner, aka Emcee Heretic, was busy building up relationships and burning down stages (not literally, of course) all across Beijing.
Despite arriving in the city around 2003, Turner didn’t really enter the local hip-hop scene until 2009, when he started going to underground clubs where he would hang out and free-style with the emcees after their shows were over. This led him to collaborate extensively with Chinese producers and artists such as Liang Weijia – aka Saber – on the 2018 track “Wolves,” and Lil Andy on 2014’s “How We Ride.” Perhaps more surprising though is the fact that at this point, Turner’s Chinese was so good he was even lending Mandarin lyrics to the songs he was creating with Chinese rappers. Speaking to online magazine, IAMHIPHOP! in 2016, Turner explained, “I can spit written bars in Chinese, but I can’t really freestyle… I’m always concerned though that the songs I’ve written in Chinese are good for a non-native speaker, but that they will seem corny to a Chinese person because I can’t express myself poetically in the same way they can.” Nevertheless, given that so many non-English speaking artists are pressured into kowtowing to Western audiences if they ever want to make it on a global scale, there’s certainly something admirable – not to mention impressive – about Turner flipping that script and singing in the language of his adopted home.
As a self-described “socially conscious” lyricist, Turner would wax poetic on themes of social justice, poverty, violence, and inequity, with beats that borrow from gospel and Americana as much as they do 90s hip-hop.
To see what some of the members of China’s rap community had to say about Turner’s passing, click here.READ: On the Record: Looking at the Future of Future Orients
Images: emergencyroomagency.com
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