Keeping It Real in Chinese Hip-Hop: Everyday Authenticity and Coming From the Street

Abstract

The status of hip-hop in China is being reshaped by the sudden popularity experienced by the genre in the last few years. An aspect that has been overlooked by scholarly research on Chinese hip-hop authenticity is that underground rappers may have to simultaneously assume multiple personal, professional, and social roles while attempting to maintain authenticity. This article provides an empirical account of how authenticity and the ‘keep it real’ motto are understood and negotiated by underground Chinese rappers. Drawing from in-depth interviews with 12 rappers, this article proposes the notion of everyday authenticity as a means for rappers to draw inspiration from unembellished daily realities while also using music to alleviate everyday hardships. The article also examines the challenges faced by underground rappers in the attempt to retain this type of authenticity in the mainstream, commercially driven environment. The tension is resolved by creating an autonomous realm for rappers that come ‘out of the street’, which allows rappers to claim legitimacy inside and outside the underground. This article provides an extension of the conceptualisation of authenticity in the Chinese hip-hop context, thus critically contributing to the global debate around hip-hop authenticity.

Introduction

In the global hip-hop context, ‘keep it real’ has been taken as a slogan to express the authenticity of hip-hop, often broadly intended as being ‘true to oneself’ (Pennycook, 2007). However, as hip-hop travels the globe and accretes meaning, claims and practices of authenticity have had to be negotiated in different sociocultural contexts (Charry, 2012; Mitchell, 2001). As a result, the concept of authenticity has been adapted to various realities through processes of ‘give-and-take between global and local’ (Kruse, 2018: 156). The Chinese case has been no exception. In its early days in the 1990s, Chinese hip-hop was mostly confined underground, its reach was limited, and authenticity was mostly claimed by building subcultural identities and distinction from the mainstream (De Kloet, 2010). In 2017, Chinese hip-hop made it to mainstream almost overnight, thanks to the hip-hop reality show The Rap of China, which gathered 100 million views within four hours of airing (Feola, 2019). Since then, industry insiders and scholars have publicly expressed concerns about how these shows, as well as government intervention, may be gradually overwhelming the development of the underground hip-hop scene and influencing expressions of authenticity (Cheuk, 2021; Luo and Ming, 2020; Wang, 2020). As mainstream representations of hip-hop thrive and modern lives and creative environments become more complex, rappers who still try to stay underground face challenges related to maintaining authenticity while assuming numerous personal, professional and social roles. These challenges often require reconciling competing positions and perspectives on a daily basis that may influence ways in which authenticity is understood and lived by artists. As such, these Chinese underground artists are faced with conflicting situations between personal careers in everyday lives, their hip-hop dreams, and making their music marketable. In this context, scholars need to reflect on the universal slogan of ‘keep it real’ to claim hip-hop authenticity and how this is negotiated by individual rappers.

This article addresses this need by providing an empirical account of the conceptualisation of ‘keeping it real’ in underground Chinese hip-hop as a means for artists to claim authenticity. Based on interviews with 12 underground Chinese rappers, the concept of everyday authenticity is introduced and discussed. This type of authenticity represents a way for artists to generate authentic creations by drawing from their daily professional lives while also providing a practical way to ease everyday frustrations and difficulties. On a more macro level, the distinction between mainstream and underground hip-hop is also examined in relation to what rappers consider to be authentic and therefore resistant to the commercial forces that are bringing hip-hop to the forefront of Chinese popular culture.

Authenticity in hip-hop and music

Scholarly research on authenticity has taken two main approaches. Some scholars conceive authenticity as an intrinsic property of cultural objects, something that presumes the existence of an ‘essential(ised), real, actual essence’ (Taylor, 1997: 21). Another line of thought holds that authenticity is not an inherent property but a socially agreed-upon construct that privileges experiences, identities and interpretations of producers and consumers of cultural products (Moore, 2002; Rubidge, 1996; Speers, 2017). A natural consequence of the latter perspective is that the perception of authenticity needs to be historicised and is a matter of subjective interpretation. As Frith (1998) argued, authenticity is not inherent to musical creations; instead, it has to do with ‘the story it is heard to tell’ (Frith, 1998: 275) and how this story enables listeners to transcend everyday routines and place themselves in imaginative cultural narratives. In this sense, authenticity is rooted in material experiences and analyses of how music is produced and consumed, so that ‘making music isn’t a way of expressing ideas; it is a way of living them’ (Frith, 1998: 111). In other words, authenticity is ‘ascribed, not inscribed’ (Moore, 2002: 210). In a similar fashion, Negus (1995) criticised the existence of an implicit idealism that abstractly defines what is commercial and what is creative and authentic. It is mundane practices and lived experiences that define these categories, as they are continuously negotiated by producers and consumers in an attempt to make sense of their musical experiences.

In the context of hip-hop, being perceived as authentic, while disparaging ‘the fake’ and dissing the inauthentic, is often elevated to the ultimate claim for the success of a rapper (Kruse, 2018). Hip-hop authenticity is traditionally built around a range of categories that include, most notably, race, gender, and social location. The archetypical authentic rapper is a Black male who lives in the city, is from the underclass, and is skillful (Harkness, 2012; McLeod, 1999). These statements match the original meaning of hip-hop authenticity, which, according to Nyawalo (2012), arose during the era of slavery as a means for Africans to fight the physical and ideological models that were forced on them. As Nyawalo (2012) argues, it is the Black musicians who blended the standard version of hip-hop music as a way for Black people to resist the suffocating sufferings in their lives. In fact, hip-hop originated from a societal background characterised by extreme poverty, violence, racial discrimination and criminal activities in the urban environments of New York in the 1970s (Rose, 1994). Hence, the phrase ‘keep it real’ has commonly been used in the context of ‘talking openly about unwanted or difficult truths about black urban street life’ that are ‘hard to hear’ (Nyawalo, 2012: 461).

When it comes to contemporary hip-hop scenes, ideas of authenticity have been re-territorialised in the attempt to make legitimacy claims relevant to local political and social contexts, languages and cultures (Charry, 2012; Condry, 2006). While hip-hop authenticity may have originally appealed to the ‘extreme local’ (Forman, 2002: xvii) of New York’s neighbourhoods, the ‘global noise’ (Mitchell, 2001) of hip-hop now requires different discourses and approaches to understand how hip-hop gets adopted in various contexts. Although some scholars argued for an exclusive Black stance of hip-hop (Allinson, 1994; Henderson, 1996), numerous studies demonstrated that hip-hop scenes constantly challenge, to various extents, the original links with race and class by pulling ‘the ideology of keeping it real back toward local definitions of what matters’ (Pennycook, 2007: 103). As a result, the concept of authenticity has steadily evolved from a racial and societal descriptor into a more complex template that includes elements such as being unique, coming from the street, creating music that is inspired by ‘old school’ influences or committing oneself to the art form, showing how ‘there is no singular version of authenticity in Hip-Hop’ (Kruse, 2018: 156).

In response to the need for a more malleable conceptualisation of authenticity, Harkness (2012) proposed the term ‘situational authenticity’ to account for how individuals traditionally seen as ‘outsiders’, such as non-Black, females, middle-class artists, can claim authenticity within hip-hop circles. These individuals emphasise certain (interpretive) elements of the artist’s identity while de-emphasising (fixed) categories. Rather than invoking the fixed categories of race, class, gender, or location, rappers may rely on more interpretive categories such as skill level and being true to oneself to claim legitimacy, or a mix of these. For instance, a female rapper may display a masculine identity to downplay her gender, or a non-Black artist may draw from his knowledge of ‘old-school’ music to underplay their race. Situational authenticity enables to frame the reduced emphasis on the standard of Black hip-hop authenticity enacted by non-Black hip-hop artists who seek recognition. For instance, Laidlaw (2011) argues for the acceptability of White rappers and their attempt to construct authenticity by relying on lyrical content and delivery, the consistency of their rappers’ persona and their job and everyday life outside the scene. As Armstrong (2004) contends, successful White hip-hop artist Eminem establishes his authenticity by demonstrating irreverence and crudeness while also legitimising himself as a White rapper by rejecting gangsta rap. However, Armstrong (2004) argues that rappers may still use their White bottom class upbringing to define themselves as underdogs. Similarly, Maxwell (2003) shows how Australian rappers downplay the role of race when defining authenticity, in favour of truthfulness to oneself and by anchoring creations to the local by using slang and referencing Australian places and landmarks.

Hip-hop authenticity in China

As an imported cultural form, Chinese hip-hop has also had to find its own contextual meanings and practices, including in relation to authenticity, within a political and sociocultural setting starkly different from the New York ghetto where hip-hop originated. When hip-hop was first introduced to China in the early 1990s, its reach was mostly underground, and authenticity was built around distinction from the mainstream, much like other music subcultures (Hodkinson, 2002; Thornton, 1996). Subcultural capital, in the form of rapping skills, look and knowledge of the origins of hip-hop, was the metric to claim authenticity, while performances were only limited to live houses in major Chinese cities (De Kloet, 2010). In the wake of the 21st century, the rise of rap battles and online music shows provided a platform for underground rappers to gain recognition (Amar, 2018). This rise also meant that hip-hop had to confront a cultural environment heavily shaped by State ideology and cultural control. Hip-hop, as an archetypical politically conscious and counterhegemonic cultural form, found itself ostensibly at odds with cultural control by the Chinese State, which instead privileges order, stability, and harmony. In fact, the Chinese government has long been invested in controlling popular culture for ideological purposes, including music, which has historically been linked with different kinds of public morality (Fung, 2008). As a case in point, hip-hop was hit by major censorship events in 2015 and 2017 that saw hundreds of songs banned from appearing on mainstream platforms as they were deemed immoral for containing content that promoted sex, violence or crime, thus harming public morality (Nie, 2021).

Tensions between hip-hop and official narratives heightened in 2017, when the online show The Rap of China brought hip-hop to the forefront of popular culture. The show brought together underground hip-hop musicians and mainstream pop singers, setting the stage for the battle over the ‘realness’ of hip-hop and dramatising the tension between mainstream and underground representations (Zou, 2019). Following the surge of the show, a considerable number of scholars have analysed how Chinese hip-hop and its perceived authenticity have been shaped by government intervention. In order to acquiesce to official narratives and policies, claims of authenticity in the mainstream have been realised through the incorporation of elements of traditional Chinese culture, local languages and cultural imagery that promote nationalistic and patriotic themes (Cheuk, 2021; Zou, 2019), thus ‘maintaining the integrity of Chineseness’ (Fung, 2008: 79). Themes related to vulgarity, violence and misogyny have progressively been erased from music platforms and shows (Nie, 2021), to the point that authenticity in the mainstream has been described as ‘tamed and sanitised to serve both the local market and Chinese nationalism’ (Zou, 2019: 184). However, some of these government-shaped strategies have enjoyed mixed success, and these representations have been deemed to prioritise commercial and State interests over an authentic representation of hip-hop’s origins and signifiers (Zou, 2019). When audiences detect underlying messages of propaganda, over-patriotic hip-hop may indeed be perceived as inauthentic and serving solely the State’s interests.

Everyday authenticity in the Chinese underground

Due to their immense popularity, scholarly investigations have favoured Chinese mainstream music shows and disregarded the perspectives of authenticity from a group of underground rappers who remain unaffiliated with major music corporations. It is important to study this class of rappers as their perceptions may shed light on daily practices of authenticity. Their perspectives can also highlight the agency of artists that constantly face challenges related to finding their own way to success in highly competitive music scenes while also exploring practices that may escape excessive cultural control in the mainstream. These individuals are typically freelance or hobbyist rappers who do not make a living out of music. Thus, they face challenges related to balancing their music careers with work, family, societal expectations and managing multiple identities. These tensions are resolved by using these very struggles, such as working multiple jobs, dealing with power hierarchies at work and facing societal pressures, as valuable creative inspiration and elevating them to the central tenet of authenticity. Here, I propose the concept of everyday authenticity to describe this type of authenticity. Two key characteristics of everyday authenticity are discussed below.

The first characteristic of everyday authenticity is that it is claimed, invoked, and employed functionally, in that it serves a pragmatic purpose for the artist. This characteristic is often encountered in various declinations of hip-hop authenticity. The functional aspect is often realised as a tool to express opposition to a dominant culture, voice political views, challenge the status quo or subvert dominant cultural symbols (McLeod, 1999; Nyawalo, 2012), especially when in relation to the struggles experienced by Black hip-hoppers in the United States (Rose, 1994). Being authentic in this context has been described as ‘the oppressed’s ability to “break away” from the oppressor’s reality in order to forge a parallel system of meaning’ (Nyawalo, 2012: 463). The peculiarity of the Chinese case is related to the intended sources and targets of authenticity. With everyday authenticity, Chinese rappers draw from and cater to everyday struggles, creatively deal with mundanity and express personal wishes. The artist’s ‘everyday’ under analysis here is related to ‘familiarity and regular social life’ (Johansson and Vinthagen, 2016: 427), as opposed to the broader sociopolitical arena. Therefore, everyday authenticity serves as a ‘strategic action’ (Kruse, 2018: 154) or a tactic (De Certeau, 1984) that helps Chinese underground rappers navigate and overcome everyday challenges. This interpretation places everyday authenticity closer to the apolitical and underground rap characteristics of some White hip-hop artists (Armstrong, 2004), and shows that cultural and political contexts can shape authenticity, especially in contexts like the Chinese one, where entering the public debate with discordant views may result in censorship and removal of songs from distribution platforms (Luo and Ming, 2020). This perspective also subscribes everyday authenticity to non-essentialist conceptions of authenticity that describe authenticity as a socially agreed-upon construct (Frith, 1998; Moore, 2002). Everyday authenticity privileges the personal experiences of rappers, as their hardships become embedded in the music they produce and show how authenticity is ‘inscribed’ into the musical creation and lived out, rather than relying on a priori essentialised criteria.

Based on the above, the second key characteristic of everyday authenticity is that it is situational, in that it ‘emphasises certain categories within the normative cluster of conditions that govern authenticity, while downplaying others’ (Harkness, 2012: 288). Similar to how a female rapper may downplay their gender by assuming a masculine persona, Chinese rappers de-emphasise the fixed categories of race and class in favour of interpretive categories such as showing off skills, staying true to oneself or grounding creations in personal struggles. In doing so, everyday authenticity is configured as a malleable and dynamic process of negotiation with daily reality, rather than a static set of conditions to be met (Kruse, 2018). This attribute is a necessary consequence of the adoption of hip-hop in China as a non-native cultural form. Much like other non-US contexts described earlier, authenticity in Chinese hip-hop cannot be realised in the traditional issues of race, given the racial uniformity of China. The assumed link with the lower classes, as sometimes employed by White rappers to claim authenticity (Grealy, 2008), is also challenged by the Chinese context, given the appropriation of Chinese hip-hop by affluent urban middle classes (De Kloet, 2010). This is also reflected by the 12 interviewees of this study, who all live in major Chinese cities and whose social extraction ranges from blue- to white-collar jobs. Some of them are also pursuing tertiary education, thus attesting to the variety of social milieux that practise hip-hop in China, as the rest of the article will discuss. In this sense, Chinese hip-hop has emerged as a vibrant and dynamic form of cultural expression that is being used pragmatically, strategically and creatively by a new generation of young Chinese artists to navigate and negotiate everyday struggles in contemporary China.

Data collection

The main purpose of this study is to investigate how ‘keep it real’, as the motto of global hip-hop artists, is understood by underground Chinese rappers to reclaim authenticity by means of in-depth qualitative semi-structured interviews. This research is part of a larger research project that started in 2018. Between October 2019 and March 2020, this research conducted multiple rounds of recruitment of Chinese hip-hop enthusiasts in online groups on the Chinese social media platform WeChat. Forty-two participants were enrolled in total, which included infrequent and committed listeners of hip-hop, short-term and long-term fans, and full-time and part-time rappers. Twelve of these individuals were identified as the most positive, active and motivated participants. They also described themselves as underground rappers in that their music is not widely sold commercially, and they are ‘not connected to major music corporations’ (Harkness, 2012: 157). The 12 interviewees were also selected for the purpose of this research because of the regularity of their musical production activity such as composing their own raps, performing in hip-hop live clubs, either solo or as a part of a crew, and taking part in local underground hip-hop competitions and live rap battles. I also listened to some of their musical creations that they upload on NetEase Cloud Music. Based on their viewpoints and some of their rap lyrics, this article seeks to explore their conceptualisations of authenticity through in-depth interviews and informal conversation with the 12 rappers.

‘Keep it real’ through everyday authenticity

Authenticity was a recurrent theme during most of the interviews with the 12 Chinese rappers and the multiple roles of the ‘keep it real’ mantra were often highlighted during interviews. Although the expression was often used in English, in Mandarin Chinese, the term is also translated and used as 保持真实 (baochi zhenshi). Baochi means ‘to maintain, to keep’ and is employed to express the temporal extension and persistence of a concept. Zhenshi is translated as ‘real, authentic, truthful’ and conveys a strong idea of authenticity and honesty about the subject being discussed. This is the starting point of this section, namely, how Chinese rappers define their own concept of being authentic and truthful through their daily music creations.

Andy Zhou studies Music Production at the University of Toronto, Canada, and has made a name for himself online with his beat pieces and original raps. This is what he had to say about his understanding of hip-hop authenticity:

Andy Zhou: ‘hip-hop is not really resistant, instead it’s all about keeping it real. Hip-hop is to say what you want to say, do what you want to do and stay true to yourself. We should not use our own real to define others’ real’.

Andy Zhou understands ‘keep it real’ from different dimensions. For him, ‘keep it real’ means staying true to oneself, which is opposed to following mass trends and conformity. On a more personal dimension, Andy believes that hip-hop music encourages him to keep his heart and not worry excessively about the insights of others, because his ‘real’ cannot be defined by others’ ideas of ‘real’. These remarks typify Pennycook (2007: 103), who argues, ‘this emphasis on being true to oneself might nevertheless be seen as the global spread of a particular individualist takes on what counts as real’. A look at Andy Zhou’s most popular raps confirms this interpretation. In his song ‘Go straight’, the refrain sings, ‘Go straight, keep it your own way, I don’t care about other people’s business or other people’s words, forget what other people said’. Similarly, in his other rap, ‘In Da street’ (title in English), Andy reaffirms his independency, ‘Stay true to your hood, you don’t need someone to lead the way you want to go’, thus proclaiming adversity to homogeneity in society and calling for individualism in defining reality and truthfulness. Another interviewee, Daniel Lim echoed the importance of individuality by positioning himself against the inauthentic and stressing the necessity of passion:

Daniel Lim: You can’t just do it for fun, or only because you think it’s cool. You can’t just do it to be famous on the internet or to copy others. You have to dedicate yourself fully to hip-hop to keep it real.

A profound and wholehearted passion for hip-hop transpires from Daniel’s words. In his opinion, time commitment and full dedication are the only ways to achieve authenticity in musical creations while not compromising with achieving only Internet fame.

We can thus see how Andy and Daniel build up authenticity around themes of individualism and commitment to music. These characteristics typify the situational attribute of everyday authenticity in that they place ‘greater emphasis on interpretive categories’, being true to oneself and artistic commitment in this case, ‘rather than those that are relatively fixed’ (Harkness, 2012: 296), such as race or class. Andy and Daniel derive authenticity from the social-psychological dimension of the ‘valorization of individualism and the demonization of conformity’ (McLeod, 1999: 140), instead of using static social categories, simply because they do not have experiences of racial struggles or coming from the underclasses. In fact, their backgrounds challenge these links: They are both native Chinese, Andy is a university student in Canada, who thus possesses high cultural and economic capital, while Daniel is a full-time MC who owns a nightclub in Chongqing and has made music a relatively stable job. In this sense, one could read Chinese hip-hop as showing how notions and uses of authenticity are ‘constantly being “remade” as hip-hop is appropriated by different groups of young people in cities and regions around the world’ (Bennett, 2004: 177).

The theme of commitment to making and listening to hip-hop was also central in the interview with Owen Gu, a freelance rapper from Guangdong. He regularly participates in rap battles in his city, but he also works in a grocery shop because he cannot make a living out of hip-hop alone. Owen believes that the struggles of his daily life represent an important source of inspiration in his raps:

Owen Gu: My written songs are all about struggling to be a rapper while keeping my job. I sometimes realise I will probably not make it big and won’t live off hip-hop, so I still try to have fun jumping between a day job and being a rapper. But it is difficult, my job at the groceries is a hard one, but, you know, this is the real life. Many amateur artists struggle with this balance exactly like me, but we rap about it to show what real life is like.

With this viewpoint, Owen Gu exemplifies two important characteristics of everyday authenticity. First, by drawing inspiration from everyday life experiences, Owen embodies Krims’ (2000) concept of collapsed identities. According to Krims, for an artist to achieve a real self, the performer’s persona must ‘collapse’ onto the mundane self to allow for the new collapsed identity to ‘speak from authentic experience’ (Harkness, 2012: 298). Owen’s worker identity collapses onto Owen as a rapper to find sources of authenticity in the contradictions brought about by the mundane. According to him, reflecting on such daily struggles in songs is essential to achieve authenticity and staying true to oneself. Thus, we see how everyday authenticity is characterised by an ‘honesty to experience’ that derives from an unmediated expression where ‘the distance between its (mental) origin and its (physical) manifestation is wilfully compressed to nil’ (Moore, 2002: 213). Second, Owen Gu’s words illustrate the pragmatic nature of everyday authenticity, as one of the aims of rapping is for Owen to find relief. In fact, he later admitted to being unhappy in his role at the grocery store because of unreasonable working hours and low pay. Yet, he finds solace in the art of music, utilising it as an instrument to convey his personal journey and attain a sense of equilibrium. Balancing rapping with a job he is not satisfied with is difficult for him and many other rappers like him, but also a source of inspiration for raps that talk about real life.

The role of multiple positions was also voiced by another interviewee, Fabio Wu, who told me his story about being married with two children, working a skilled job and rapping at the same time. During the interview, he sounded very proud of his creations because they ‘draw from my daily difficulties and they give me so much energy everyday’, which highlights the practical aspect of everyday authenticity, as raps help Fabio by energising him. Fabio used to rap only within his friends’ circle, until he was encouraged to create a NetEase account to upload his creations. Initially, he did not achieve much visibility, but he recently reached about one million streams and was invited by a small music label to record his own album. He confessed to me that, while he finds the offer attractive, he is considering keeping his blue-collar job to get more struggling stories to infuse his music: ‘If I give up my job, I am afraid I will lose flexibility and inspiration to create real music from my everyday life’. It is indeed this tension that provides valuable material for Fabio’s lyric expression and it thus feels like it becomes a necessity for rappers to endow their songs with difficulties, to the point that Fabio’s commitment takes precedence over a potentially better-paid job with a music label. Only through this struggle can rap express everyday authenticity and resist the same hardships that become sources of creativity, which is how Chinese rappers learn to speak from their life lessons. Citing Chinese famous rapper Gai, ‘that’s why people work jobs during the day and rap at night’. In this respect, everyday authenticity echoes Nyawalo’s idea that authenticity helps forge a ‘parallel system of meaning, one that provides more agency’ (Nyawalo, 2012: 463). However, unlike Nyawalo’s emphasis on the struggles of Black Americans, the Chinese case points to the artist’s agency in negotiating the tensions and challenges arising from multiple social roles and identities. This aspect continues to show Chinese how rappers place more emphasis on the interpretive categories of truthfulness and commitment to individual experiences, rather than being tied to fixed categories (Harkness, 2012), thus revealing how everyday authenticity draws from and expresses everyday experiences, needs and wishes of the artist.

This is perhaps better illustrated by the story of MC Guang, who kept telling me that he works several part-time jobs while writing ‘bloody real songs’ in his spare time. During the interview, he invited me to browse his NetEase profile, which has about 5000 followers. In one of his most popular songs, MC Guang raps, ‘he is an arrogant, greedy, unwise, selfish little bastard. Such people are the worst and the most hateful’. He later explained to me that the target of dissing was one of his front-line managers, who often uses his high status to sow discord in the workplace. As MC Guang would later admit in the interview, in response to his manager’s behaviour, he pretends to follow rules in the workplace but uses his working hours to create hip-hop music to discredit the manager. MC Guang’s story exposes how everyday authenticity unites truthfulness to the artists’ lived experiences with the functionality of using hip-hop as a creative, effective and smart survival tactic in response to everyday frustrations. When faced with power hierarchies at work and an unscrupulous line manager, MC Guang takes up the weapons of music against his boss and uses the working time to express personal desires and interests, rather than producing profit for the employer. The pursuit of relief by MC Guang combines ‘relational tactics (a struggle for life), artistic creations (an aesthetic), and autonomous initiatives (an ethic)’ (De Certeau, 1984: ix). In fact, this use of everyday authenticity echoes De Certeau’s creative use of the network of social discipline, whereby artists unleash creativity and employ music to bend norms to their personal advantage. This is especially relevant in a modern Chinese power environment, where individual expression of one’s desires needs to be carefully balanced with traditional values of deference to authority and risks of censorship. This use of rap as a creative outlet embodies a form of everyday authenticity that allows MC Guang to channel his real emotions and create music that speaks to the everyday struggles that he and others in similar situations face.

Indeed, creators such as MC Guang, Owen Gu and Fabio Wu are hobbyist or freelance rappers who do not make a living out of hip-hop, so that they also work at least another job. They often have unstable salaries and must deal with precarious jobs to make ends meet, thus making it difficult to sustain a career in music due to financial barriers, limited opportunities to enter the wider market and fierce competition among online artists. They do not have access to the same resources or promotional opportunities that signed rap artists do, so they must rely on their own creativity and resourcefulness to make their musical mark. This is why everyday authenticity is very much pronounced in this category of artists. For these independent rappers, everyday authenticity represents both a self-help solution to cope with the difficulties they face in their everyday lives and a way to be genuine and meaningful in their creations. The repeated reference to a ‘collapsed identity’ (Krims, 2000) and the adherence to an ‘honesty of the experience’ mentioned earlier shed light on their perspective on creative motivation. In contrast to contemporary mainstream rappers who adhere to stereotypical themes of swag, money, and success to garner attention (Cheuk, 2021), non-mainstream rappers express themselves in a more genuine manner. In this respect, underground artists choose to use their music to convey a great deal of human experience in contemporary Chinese society, where multiple levels of rappers operate, and everyday paradoxes and problems must be handled. By contrast, individuals like Andy Zhou, an overseas MA student, and Daniel Lim, a full-time DJ and nightclub owner, have more financial stability, access to better education and a wider range of life experiences and perspectives to draw from. In fact, these individuals highlight a different aspect of everyday authenticity, which has more to do with the valorisation of individualism and the importance of commitment to hip-hop as an art form, rather than everyday struggles that they experience to a lesser extent. The next section continues to explore how everyday authenticity is understood and negotiated with respect to the rappers’ positionalities between the mainstream and the underground.

‘We come from street’: hip-hop authenticity between the mainstream and the underground

Another perspective on the ‘keep it real’ mantra offered by the interviewees is centred on the ongoing tension between underground and commercial hip-hop. In the Chinese hip-hop scene, like in other contexts, this discourse is intimately linked with authenticity, as it often revolves around debates on what is pure and polluted culture or, respectively, authentic and fake expression (McLeod, 1999). Since the first season of The Rap of China aired, popular culture blogs and entertainment news sites (Feola, 2019) as well as scholarly research (Cheuk, 2021; Zhao and Lin, 2020; Zou, 2019) have emphasised the discord between the mainstream and the underground, often holding that underground rappers are considered real, while idol rappers, the participants in The Rap of China, are fake. This diatribe exacerbated existing quarrels between rappers and music labels, such as the never-ending infamous dispute between Gai and PG One, co-winners of the first season of the show, or the clashes between the Gosh label in Sichuan and the Red Flower Party in Xi’an. These rows, which began after rappers and labels accused each other of not being authentic, have consistently been understood by hip-hop fans and rappers as aimed at highlighting the discourse of authenticity of hip-hop (Ge, 2019). MC Jin, an underground rapper, commented on the argument between Gai and PG One:

MC Jin: ‘those contestants are all fakers. Do you think that they really want to keep it real? Do you think they rap about their life struggles? They are not from the street, so they don’t care. All they have and want is money’.

Even though some specific artistic behaviours, such as the rows between labels above, may be aimed at maintaining hip-hop credibility, rappers like MC Jin, who seek to maintain suitable ownership and control of their ‘from the street’ identity, do not buy it. Instead, ‘coming from the street’ is tantamount to experiencing life struggles in MC Jin’s opinion, something that the ‘fakers’ in music shows do not care about. This is a common narrative in hip-hop discourses, one that invokes ‘the street’ as a social-locational category. For many rappers, realness is understood as ‘not dissociating oneself from the community from which one came – the street’ (McLeod, 1999: 139), thus evoking issues of poverty and marginalisation that characterised the juxtaposition between rich suburbia and the poorer inner city in US hip-hop. However, MC Jin does not, in this sense, ‘come from the street’, references to which remained vague for the rest of the interview. MC Jin is a relatively well-off freelance rapper that regularly tours underground venues in Shanghai and participated in a local reality show. MC Jin appropriates ‘the street’ situationally (Harkness, 2012) by de-emphasising fixed categories of extreme locality (the street) and social class (underclasses). Certainly, while post-1980s’ Chinese youth have had their fair share of personal and social challenges, the ‘street’ and the ‘life struggles’ MC Jin refers to are closer to the daily and creative struggles of being a freelance rapper in a competitive music market, rather than ‘the street’ as the ‘worst imaginable conditions of existence’ (Forman, 2002: 89) that defined the Bronx. Instead, it is everyday hardships that become a key source of authenticity for underground rappers, and a reaction to the threat of underground hip-hop being assimilated into commercial hip-hop, solely driven by profit.

MC Xing also voiced concerns about assimilation with the mainstream. As he believes, ‘If you get signed by a record company, you are not real anymore. Real hip-hop is from the street, it’s from the hood, if you rap about commercially appealing stuff you are not true to yourself’. MC Xing’s points exemplify the perception of authenticity, as tightly linked with ‘the street’ origin of hip-hop, and resisting commercialisation, thus exposing the tensions and contradictions between staying authentic and being a commercial artist who potentially earns a lot of money. Although MC Xing owns a small music studio in Chengdu, he strongly voiced his support for small local rappers and his willingness to promote only regional competitions and events. In contrast to MC Jin and MC Xing above, Giam Zheng believes that it is not necessary to label hip-hop as mainstream or underground in relation to themes of authenticity:

Giam Zheng: ‘the so-called mainstream hip hop and underground hip hop distinction is just a label. It doesn’t matter if either scene is rebellious or whichever rapper claim to “keep it real”. After all, we’re all from the street, you know. I just hope that my voice can be heard more and more in the underground or the mainstream, so more people can know about my rap’.

Giam Zheng has been signed with a label in Guangzhou for two years and he believes that distinguishing mainstream hip-hop and underground hip-hop is not important. Instead, his desire to be heard in either scene reveals a personal search for fame more than an intrinsic interest or intent to be authentic or rebellious. What matters is to be from the street, a concept that takes precedence over, and includes both, the mainstream and the underground in Giam’s vision. Hannah Chen, a well-known rapper in several venues across Hebei province, also shared a similar opinion when she stated that authenticity can also exist in the mainstream, as long as rappers can credibly show that they come from the street. These visions echo After Journey’s opinion, an indie hip-hop artist who was runner up at the 2017 edition of The Rap of China, who said, ‘no one can say I am from underground, we are all from the street’.

While these viewpoints indicate that ‘coming from the street’ may be employed as a common mantra across the underground and mainstream, they also suggest that the concept is deployed differently depending on the rappers’ positionality. Despite defining himself as underground, Giam Zheng is signed with a relatively big label. A look at his online activities reveals that he often travels abroad and indulges in fine dining and deluxe hotels. Hannah Chen has made a name for herself across the Hebei province, and she has become a regional celebrity. Similar to After Journey, whose music has even achieved overseas recognition in Western markets, Giam and Hannah have achieved financial stability and recognition in the (local) music industry. This enables them to make music their full-time occupation and they appear to be more ‘occupied with consumptive hedonism, individualistic narcissism, and materialistic pursuits’ (Fung, 2008: 97). In contrast, MC Jin and MC Xing embody a rawer interpretation of ‘coming from the street’ as they are not bound by the rules of the industry and can express themselves more candidly. They create music that is more reflective of their personal experiences and values, especially those related to the challenges of navigating the underground music scene through the clubs of Shanghai or small recording studios in Chengdu. This comparison shows how the functional and everyday aspects of authenticity are more pronounced in individuals who are not tied to major corporations and are still attempting to establish themselves as full-time artists.

This is how Chinese hip-hop artists show their ‘keep it real’ attitude at the boundary between the mainstream and the underground. ‘Coming from the street’ is configured as a uniting element between the underground and the mainstream for artists who struggle to emerge and points to the importance of authenticity in enabling this transition or, at least, in blurring the boundary between the two domains. Some Chinese hip-hop artists are likely to understand their practice as an autonomous realm directly ‘out of the street’ and play a mediating role in the art they create in society. Hip-hop artists can arguably move around as they please, doing things they like and relating freely to each other, meaning that the voices ‘from the street’ do not map to serious positions or oppositions. Instead, their voices are means for contemporary Chinese hip-hop artists to authentically sell their music. In a sense, it could be argued that the hip-hop scene in China may be in a period in which artists are committed to producing marketable music which is commercially conscious while attempting to maintain the necessary authenticity of the origins of hip-hop culture by appropriating the ‘coming from street’ identity. This duality has enabled artists like Giam and Hannah to advance their stance towards mainstream recognition. However, these processes may not succeed, as Cheuk (2021) believes: ‘members of the field are exploiting, and even disregarding, African American street culture as stereotypes for their own individualistic benefits’ (p. 95). It is through these contrasting positions that the boundary between underground and mainstream Chinese hip-hop seeks to be blurred by rappers who are making it to the mainstream, but, at the same time, care about being perceived as authentic. In their perception, attempting to expand musical creations to the mainstream does not necessarily imply that Chinese underground rappers must lose authenticity, as legitimacy can be reclaimed by coming from the street. ‘After all, we’re all from the street, you know’, Giam Zheng reiterated multiple times.

Conclusion

As hip-hop becomes increasingly commodified and globalised, there has been heated debate questioning whether hip-hop artists, along with the cultural form itself, can still be considered authentic. As modern life becomes more complex, rappers may have to take on several personal, professional, and social roles, which requires reconciling often competing positions and perspectives on a daily basis. The multitude of roles influences in turn how authenticity is constructed in these individuals’ musical creations. This article demonstrates that authenticity in Chinese hip-hop is not necessarily claimed through the ‘traditional’ issues of racial legitimacy, disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds or technical and lyrical proficiency, similar to research in other cultural contexts. Instead, in Chinese hip-hop, the ‘keep it real’ mantra can be deployed by Chinese underground rappers as a practical means by drawing inspiration from daily life and using hip-hop as a release valve from everyday hardships. This is what this article describes as everyday authenticity. ‘Keeping it real’ through everyday authenticity means to rap about the crude reality of working multiple jobs or dealing with arrogant bosses, daily struggles deprived of embellishments, and for the musical product (and the artist) to be accepted for what they are. Everyday authenticity is to narrate the daily reality of rappers who need to juggle multiple roles and, in doing so, resist the frustrations that come with personal hardships by venting out anger and dissatisfaction. Everyday authenticity is intended to be deployed as a pragmatic and practical instrument, deprived of unnecessary embellished or attractive features. It allows rappers to be truthful and crude about their feelings and emotions by drawing from rappers’ everyday struggles and difficulties and using music to express those dissatisfactions and alleviate them.

Moreover, on a more global level, different positions on this type of authenticity between mainstream and underground hip-hop have been discussed in the article. Underground hip-hop rappers believe that the sudden popularity of shows such as The Rap of China fosters inauthenticity and the shallow search for money and online fame. As a result, the mainstream hip-hop scene has become plagued with inauthentic artists, and the fame of commercialised music violates the ‘keep it real’ attitude, given that the mainstream is driven only by commercial interests. However, this view was not fully shared by all participants. Some rappers also believe that the dichotomy between the underground and mainstream is dissipating. Some artists in the contemporary scene place more importance on the desire to be heard and convey their music to the widest possible audience, be it in the underground or the mainstream. Since making music and performing in the contemporary music scene appear diametrically opposed to authenticity and being true to oneself, the dilemma faced by some Chinese underground rappers is not to choose between hip-hop authenticity and hip-hop commercialisation but how to live with both on an ongoing daily basis. These artists have a strong interest in producing music that is both marketable and sufficiently authentic, whereby authenticity is intended to convey the idea of ‘coming out of the street’ and interpreted as an autonomous realm where rappers can operate as mediators and claim authenticity regardless of their belonging to the mainstream or the underground.