The rap group Yin Ts’ang (“hidden” in Chinese), made up of a Beijinger, a Chinese-Canadian and two Americans, is part of a growing hip-hop scene. / YINENT

BEIJING - Rougher and more rebellious than the bland pop that floods the airwaves here, hip-hop is not sanctioned by broadcast media producers or state censors but has managed to attract a grass-roots fan base. And many students and working-class Chinese have begun writing their own rap as a form of selfexpression.

“Hip-hop is free, like rock ‘n’roll? we can talk about our lives, what we’re thinking about, what we feel,”said Wang Liang, 25, a popular hip-hop D.J. in China who is known as Wordy.“The Chinese education system doesn’t encourage you to express your own character. ”

While American rappers like Eminem and Q-Tip have been popular in China since the 1990s, home-grown rap didn’t start gaining momentum until a decade later. The group Yin Ts’ang (its name means“hidden”), one of the pioneers of Chinese rap, is made up of global nomads: a Beijinger, a Chinese-Canadian and two Americans.

“The big change was when rappers started writing verse in Chinese, so people could understand,”said Zhong Cheng, 27, a member of the group who was raised in Canada but born in Beijing, where he returned in 1997.“Before that, kids listened to hip-hop in English but maybe less than 1 percent could actually begin to understand.”

Yin Ts’ang’s first hit was“In Beijing,”from the band’s 2003 debut album,“Serve the People”(Scream Records); the title is a twist on an old political slogan. It sets a melody played on a Chinese fiddle called the erhu against a hip-hop beat. The song, an insider’s look at Beijing’s sights and sounds, took the underground music scene by storm.

“There’s a lot of cats that can rap back home,”said Jeremy Johnston, a member of the group and the son of a United States Air Force captain.“But there’s not a lot of cats that can rap in Chinese.” Mr.Johnston, 33, moved to Beijing in the late ‘90s because, he said, it was“the thing nobody else was doing.”

Since“In Beijing,”the Chinese hip-hop scene has quickly grown. Hiphop.cn, a Web site listing events and links to songs, started with just a few hundred members in 2007; in 2008 it received millions of views, according to one of the site’s directors.

Dozens of hip-hop clubs have opened across the country, and thousands of raps and music videos by Chinese M.C.’s are spreading over the Internet. But making Chinese hip-hop is still a relatively profitless? and often subversive? activity. Some rappers address what they see as the country’s most glaring injustices.

Wong Li, a 24-year-old rapper from Dongbei, uses Chinese proverbs in his lyrics to create social commentary.“All people care about is money,”he said.“If you don’t have money, you’re treated like garbage. ”

Shuo chang, the Chinese word for hiphop, translates to“speak sing” and is a loaded term. It also describes a contentious subject for musicians, producers and fans in China. Pop stars who have their own spin on hip-hop dominate the mainstream here. Many tack high-speed raps onto the end of their songs, even ballads, and consider themselves rappers.

They rap about love“and call it hip-hop when it isn’t,”said Wang Liang, the D.J.

While Beijing’s underground music scene is generally under the authorities’radar? hip-hop, indie rock and reggae groups perform regularly at nightclubs here? the producers representing broadcast media in China avoid musicians perceived as threatening.

After seven years together, Mr.Zhong and Mr.Johnston of Yin Ts’ang still struggle to pay the bills, but they haven’t stopped making hip-hop, which they now do under their own label, YinEnt.

“When I got here and met Jeremy, we were both so inspired by these people, we were like,‘Let’s drop some Chinese rhymes for the locals,’and our Chinese friends were like,‘There are no Chinese rhymes!,’and we were like,‘That’s crazy!’From that day, we haven’t stopped rhyming.”


By JIMMY WANG