I am back in New York for the next month starting my MFA Art Practice program at the School of Visual Arts, so excuse my delays in posting new material. After shooting Han Han for the New Yorker I was able to escape to Changsha to witness the Meeting of Styles graffiti gathering. Over a hundred graffiti artists from all over China congregated in the city that once witnessed Mao Zedong’s conversion to communism. Street art in China is still in a very nascent stage, so I was greatly impressed by the wide variety of styles on display smack in the middle of Changsha’s waterfront. Quite frankly I was a bit surprised the local powers that be even approved a graffiti event of this scale in the first place. The artwork ran for hundreds of meters, stretching out from either side of the Xiangjiang River No.1 Bridge – a major transportation artery in Hunan’s capital. The video below walks you through the core of the murals created during the Meeting of Styles. I met a ton of really interesting graffiti artists while in Changsha who I will be following up with individually across China.

Over the first half of this year it’s been my pleasure to hang out with DJ Wordy in his Sanlitun studio as he collaborated with Soulspeak on the aptly named Wordy Soulspeak instrumental album. The release party is this Friday, May 27 at Yugong Yishan – be there or be square. All I can say is that the beats are DOPE, and many of the tracks are getting lots of play on my iPod (check out this posting for shootouts for the album from Pete Rock, RZA, Kidd Koala and more). DJ Wordy and Soulspeak are really trying to step up the quality of hip hop production in China. This album is a great first step in the direction of trying to get together the best producers with the best MCs in the country. Hopefully there will be a remix of some sort with all the Beijing heads spitting rhymes over it. Right now I feel the big thing holding back hip hop in China is the lack of collaboration between the beat makers and the freestylers as well as a lack of impetus to get things out on a consistent basis. People are starting to wake up though, and I hope to see a bunch of new hip hop albums released this year. Check out the Wordy Soulspeak video promo I put together below, complete with interview and studio tour. Stay tuned for more.

Nasty Ray is easily one of my favorite rappers in China – a true, homegrown, Beijing-back-alley freestlyer. First drawn to hip hop when he heard a Naughty by Nature track on an NBA videogame in 1998, he‘s now a battler who never shies from the mic. Nasty Ray is best known for his Dirty North CD released on the YinEnt label with Lao Zheng, but continues to collaborate with Aidge Rock of the Aesthetics Crew based in Los Angeles. A big fan of the Wu-Tang Clan, he also got to fulfill a dream by opening up for Ghostface Killah when he rolled through Beijing last year. The video above was taken at last month’s Section Six hip hop party. It showcases Nasty Ray whiling out with his crew followed by a song featuring heavyweight MC Daxiao. Also, as part of the upcoming Jue Festival, Nasty Ray will perform at the “Slam, Rap, Words” event held at 2 Kolegas. I’ll end the post with a rhyme he wrote for me when I took his portrait last September:

从我嘴里说的词, 到唐宋念的诗, 这跨越的是五千年文化的历史, 我代表团结湖讲着老北京的话, 欢迎来到我的家和我一起岔

The words from my mouth to poems of Tang and Song / Stretch over history 5,000 years long / I represent community, spit real Beijinghua /Come over to my house and we’ll cha (battle)

Getting down to funky beats in China has been around much longer than grabbing the mic and spitting rhymes. Many point to pirated tapes of Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo getting wide circulation in the late eighties as really triggering the b-boy and b-girl movement. More established breakdancing scenes in Korea and Japan also influenced and catalyzed rockers in China. Now there are dance crews all over major cities with Beijing and Shanghai at the epicenter of this urban dance movement. One of the best places to catch these kids throw down on the dance floor in Beijing is the Section Six hip hop party held on the last Saturday of every month at Yugong Yishan, but competitions are held on the regular throughout the city. Otherwise there are plenty of dance studios in town if you feel like practicing before busting a move in public.

Das Racist blew through Beijing last week, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. As far as I can tell these crazy boys like to party hard unless the particulate matter in our fine city set them off in a distinctive way. As soon as they landed, Victor and Dap started drinking the local fire water in great quantities and decided to shave off most of their hair. Dap left a rather prominent mustache, but quickly dumped it after being mistaken for Borat, a most notable Kazakh in China. Anyway, I was really excited to see their show, especially after reading the complimentary review in the New Yorker. Unfortunately the sound at Yugong Yishan that evening was not the best and failed to embellish their drunken escapades on stage. Still, the crowd got into the performance, and I enjoyed seeing them romp around, spit rhymes and rock out some drum solos. The real treat came the next day when I joined them in a studio with Jeffrey Kung of The Park and watched them lay down some verse over a track composed by DJ Wordy. It sounded awesome and featured some Tarzan yelps that will most likely make their way onto DJ Wordy’s upcoming CD. When I left Das Racist they were being bundled into black cabs bound for the train station to hop an overnighter to Shanghai. I hope they make it out of Asia alive. The video below features outtakes from their interview on The Park, recording with DJ Wordy and performance at Yugong Yishan.

The finals for the China Iron Mic freestyle battle competition took place to a packed house at Yugong Yishan this weekend. Winners of three preliminary rounds in Beijing, Guangzhou and Wuhan faced off with MC Majun/马俊 from Xinjiang who earned his slot in the final four through a knockout tournament earlier in the evening. Iron Mic is the oldest and most recognized freestyle battle competition in the country. Some of the greatest MCs in China have battled on stage seeking its crown including MC Webber who won the first three in a row and now oversees the proceedings. This year the man to beat was the Beijing hometown favorite MC Dawei/大卫. I documented his skills in a previous post covering the Beijing preliminary round. He is only sixteen years old, and his rhyming is precocious to say the least. However, the man of the hour turned out to be MC Majun. In one evening he battled his way through a host of characters from all over China with his machine-gun-like flow to clinch a coveted spot in the semifinals where he tore apart MC JV from Wuhan. Before facing off with MC Dawei in the finals the entire place went crazy, and despite MC Dawei’s home field advantage, MC Majun won the crowd over and had them chanting Xinjiang when he spit his final verse.

I met up with DJ Wordy this afternoon to interview him about the history of hip hop in Beijing. For those of you not in the know, DJ Wordy is a three-time DMC China DJ Champion and has toured all over the world with his phat beats and dynamic scratching abilities. His contributions to the Beijing hip hop scene are legendary. More recently, DJ Wordy spent a month in New York this summer and was taken under the wing of Damon Dash who wants to make inroads into China through his new DIY-inspired company, DD172. Hopefully by the end of the year a new CD from DJ Wordy will be out with artist collaborations from all over the world including those from Damon Dash’s roster such as Curren$y and Ski Beatz – local Beijing MCs would also be featured. If the project actually materializes, it could represent a great leap forward for underground hip hop in China. Beijing freestylers are in desperate need of some quality producers who can put their talents to better use.

The opening party for the China-wide Iron Mic competition kicked off this past weekend at Yugongyishan. The festivities also joined hands with Section Six, the longest-standing freestyle hip hop party in Beijing. Overall it was a great night and included an appearance by Damon Dash who is supposedly trying to break into the China market with some new bands and supposedly even here to poach some talent to take back to the America – all hearsay for now. The highlight of the evening was definitely MC Davey. He came out early for a few numbers, but truly shined when the freestyle battles ensued. Although most of the old school Beijing MCs were taking a seat to make room for some of the young bucks, it was obvious that MC Davey’s rhyming skills were some of the best in the house. He easily took the opening competition and got the crowd riled up at the beginning of every set. It’s going to be interesting to see where MC Davey goes in the future, and whether or not he could be a new hope for Beijing’s street hip hop to break into the wider market currently dominated by studio-groomed, pop-flavored hip hop. The attached video highlights some of MC Davey’s skills.