"Rap of China" Finalist Kafe Hu on Hip Hop as Art

For years, China’s hip hop community was thin and disparate. Early acts like Yin Ts’ang from Beijing propped up the skeleton of a scene, but without muscles or organs, hip hop as a cultural force never managed to penetrate the mainstream.

But now in the era of game-changing reality TV show Rap of China, hip hop is battling for a position at the head of China’s pop cultural identity. The frontline is Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province and home to the new generation of Chinese rap — in no small part due to the work of Kafe Hu, who this year made it to the final of The Rap of China.

Although he didn't take home the championship (and although the show received historically poor reviews), Hu is a rap pioneer and a real talent worth checking out. Last year, we sat down with Hu to talk about Sichuan’s hip hop origins, artistic purity in a commercial industry, and the growth that comes with starting a family. Following his appearance in last weekend's Rap of China finale, we're reposting some of the highlights from that interview below. For the full thing, hit "Read more" at the bottom of this message.

When did you start listening to hip hop, and when did you start rapping?

I was 14 when I first heard hip hop. And since we’re on this topic, I have to mention my hometown. Everybody thinks I’m from Chengdu, but I’m actually from a smaller city called Jiangyou. The only culture there was food and tourism, so everything around me was just buses and restaurants — there was basically zero hip hop there.

One day my friends and I saw a Korean show with people doing hip hop dance — but we didn’t know that term back then. They were dancing to some rhythmic music, which I later learned was Eminem’s Slim Shady LP. It left a lasting impression on me, and that was the first time I heard rap music. Well, almost. When I was young, my dad bought some VCDs… some Fresh Prince, De La Soul… so really, by the time I was 10, I had already listened to a lot of old school rap. But the first time when I actually knew it was hip hop, it was Eminem.

Kafe Hu breaks down some Sichuanese slang in an episode of Slang Dynasty

The reason I started rapping was because I realized my body wasn’t good for hip hop dance. It looked awful, so I wanted to do something else that was cool. That was around the time we got a computer in my house, and I started searching online for rap albums. 50 Cent, T.I., Jay-Z….

Eventually I found a Chinese rap forum online. A lot of people rapping on there sounded terrible, but the feeling was there. Other users showed me how to download a cracked version of some recording software, so I could record raps over instrumentals. I downloaded a ton of beats. That was the start of me rapping.

What was the scene like in Sichuan and in Chengdu back then? 

Well at the start it wasn’t rap that was popular, but breakdancing. It was really big in China back then, so when I got to Chengdu there were already a lot of hip hop fans, wearing oversized clothes, dancing. There was one group that was always doing street performances for 100RMB a pop. Meanwhile, rap was really overlooked. People brushed it off — it seemed like an infant learning how to walk. When I see my son walking, he can’t walk well, and sometimes he falls. Rap that I saw in Chengdu twelve years ago was like that.

When I first went to Chengdu, there were only a few people who were rapping. Later there were ten, then twenty, now Chengdu probably has over a thousand rappers. So it grew like that. The hip hop dance era is over, the rock era is also over, but rap is still pushing on. More and more people started coming to our shows — I remember one performance with Chengdu Rap House, the first time the audience was over 1,000… that was when we realized that rap could be successful in Chengdu.

Kafe Hu - “二十一世纪精神病”

You’re known by a lot of your fans for your meaningful, true-to-life lyrics. Is it important to you that you don’t write about overly commercial subjects like cars and money?

I don’t really choose. I don’t think about what to say or write, it’s just an extension of my personality. I don’t have cars, jewelry, or women hanging at my side — if there are women with me, they stay there for an hour, then they leave with other guys. So my life isn’t like that. I can only write about what happens in my life. I can’t lie and say that I was driving a really expensive car, with a girl with basketball-sized boobs.

I’ve never thought about what to write. It’s not like cooking, where I have to choose what recipe I’m going to make. Sometimes inspiration is like taking a dump. You sit on the toilet for half an hour and nothing comes out, but when you’re walking around unprepared, you might nearly shit yourself.

People say my lyrics are kind of poetic, or hard to understand. I think that’s a big misunderstanding. When you’re good at something, you won’t do it in a normal way — you’ll do it in a meaningful way. If you don’t understand the lyrics, don’t try to understand them.

If you go to a museum and look at a painting and say, “what is this trying to represent?”, then you won’t get the meaning, no matter how hard you try. Why not look at rap like we do paintings? To me, rap is a form of art. And if that’s the case, sometimes you don’t need to understand the lyrics.

How do you feel about artists who do rap about more commercial things? 

I’d say they’re the same as me. We all have to “keep it real”… but keep what real? It’s whatever you want — that’s what’s real. Sometimes I rap about the dreams I want to achieve, and my dream isn’t about cars, jewelry, and women. But maybe for others it is.

Before, there was the American dream. Now there’s the Chinese dream. It’s the same idea — these rappers are all speaking their Chinese dream. You might say they’re imitating the American dream, or the African-American dream. But at our core, we’re all the same. I think there’s no difference between these rappers and myself.

Hit "Read More" at the bottom of this message for the rest of the interview, including Kafe's take on fatherhood and the future of Chinese hip hop.

Additional assistance from Ying Li, Katherine Wang and Elizabeth Wang

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