Hip Hop Commune, a rap group made up of Chinese rappers Yitai Wang, Pact and Castle$ Deniro have been paying homage to their rap influences as this year marks the 50th anniversary of hip hop. The trio made waves during their first appearance in the US a few years ago when they freestyled to Eminem’s My Name is on the radio program Sway in the Morning which has since garnered 2.5 million views on Youtube. The Knockturnal chatted with the trio as they were in the states for The Grammy Awards earlier this month.
Speaking on Eminem who greatly influenced them Yitai stated, “When rap came to China when the internet became popular Eminem was the guy he was at the top around 2002.” He went on to further note that other musical influences of his include D12, Jay Z, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. Castle$ who was born in Philadelphia mentioned fellow Philly born rapper Cassidy as an influence as well as Meek Mill, Lil Wayne, The Roots, Black Thought and Gillie Da Kid. He also stated that he raps in both Chinese and English. Pact noted Tupac Shakur as an influence.
“Hip hop is kind of new in China, it is just coming up. It just became really mainstream. So people still have a lot of stereotyping and like they think we’re trying to be gangsters and we’re trying to be somebody else that we are not. But for us because we’re in a game for maybe over a decade we really think we don’t need to play the rule, and then we just be ourselves keeping it real,” Yitai spoke about how hip hop is developing in China and fighting stereotypes about what it means to be a rapper in China. And a lot of a parents in China, they don’t want their kids to do hip hop or do be a rapper because they might drop out of school or they might start doing bad things, but like most of the kids that I know, they good, they straight and then they are just focusing in on their dream,” he added.
As this year marks the 50th year of hip hop, Castle$ spoke about what the milestone means to him and driving Chinese hip hop forward in the future. “I want to say first of all, it’s amazing how far hip hop has came as the 50th anniversary, and I think it’s a blessing how this music changed my life and it reached cross borders,” he stated. “It reached everywhere in Asia and was a big influence to Asia, in the beginning. Through the music, with a lot of people initially it was like a lot of copy and pasting, but then later on, people started to develop their own style. And I just want to say now that it has become on a bigger platform and more mainstream more people are getting to hear the music, which is a great thing, but like my boy brother Pact said there’s a lot of Og Chinese MCs that weren’t getting recognized,” he added.
I feel like what we can do as hip hop heads ourselves and as kids that love the game, what we can do through our music is we can explain the culture and have our individual style and to show the world what Chinese hip hop is about,” Castle$ said.