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Asian Hip Hop Artists

Drunken Tiger, Bizzy,  Dynamic Duo, Dabo, King Ghidorah, etc…
I can go on and on with these hip hop names from both Korea and Japan as lately there just seem to be more and more out there. However, I will stick to the ones that I like the best… ad since this website is devoted to Kpop and Jpop I will briefly cover both Korean hip hop and Japanese hip hop.

Here is a brief history for those of you who don’t know…

Korean Hip Hop came about as a result of Tiger JK and DJ Shine collaborating together in the mid 1990s (Drunken Tiger). Drunken Tiger was formed to bring about a view of Korean hip hop as a result of a song by American rapper Ice Cube. At that time the tension was high due to a Korean shop owner shot some would be thieves in L. A. and Ice Cube then created a song called Black Korea. Drunken Tiger wanted to basically retaliate with their own brand of hip hop and thus became the godfathers of Korean hip hop that they are today… but it goes deeper than that

If you dig further you can find the nation’s very first rap song was Hong Seo Bum’s Gim-sat-gat in the 1980s and this early form of Korean hip hop spread like wildfire.

Baggy jeans and sneakers became the new standard of fashion. As a result K-pop stars started to sprinkle their songs with bits of rap her and there… and anyone who was anyone knew the opening verses to the hit Seo Taiji and Boys’ song Nan Arayo.

Weened on Soul Train and artists like Grandmaster Flash, Biz Markie and James Brown, the new generation of Korean hip-hop developed and tweaked their skills in private while scavenging for records, turntables and videos so they could increase their knowledge until it grew into the form of Korean hip hop that it is today. The question is if Korean hip hop has reached its peak or is there more room to grow?

Japanese Hip Hop started as a result of Hiroshi Fujiwara returned to Japan in the 1980s and began to play hip hop records which got other people questioning what it was. With the 1983 movie  called “Wild Style” ( a classic hip hop film) which introduced break dancing and the one and only Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.

The years 1994 and 1995, marked the beginning of hip-hop’s commercial success in Japan. The first hit was Schadaraparr’s “Kon’ya wa b?gi bakku” (Boogie Back Tonight) by Scha Dara Parr and Ozawa Kenji, followed by East En X Yuri’s “Da. Yo. Ne.” and “Maicca,” which each sold a million copies.  This sudden popularity of J-rap, which was largely characterized as party rap, sparked a debate over ‘realness’ and authenticity between “newly commercial” and underground hip-hop artists.

Today’s Japanese rap music music has branched off to various forms such as “rock rap”, “techno rap”, ” spoken word”, and their own version of “gangster rap“.

Asian Rap Music as a whole is still growing in popularity around the continent and still has plenty of room to expand and branch off into more splinters of originality and creativity.

What Asian rap music isn’t…

Big Bang, 2NE1, Super Junior… these are not rap groups and will never be. G-Dragon… is not original. His new song “Heartbreaker” sounds strikingly similar to Flo Rider’s song “Right Round” for most of the first verse. On top of that… G-Dragon looks like a man trying to look like a woman who is trying to look like a man… if you can even understand that… because I don’t.

What Asian Rap IS…

Drunken Tiger and Dabo… these are “punch you in the face” rap groups/artists that put thie blood sweat and tears into thier music. They are people who make music as a labor of love and are not in it for the commercial aspect of it.

Tiger JK and Son

In fact, Tiger JK from Drunken tiger is a “new dad” who had a child with his wife Tasha back in March of 2008. Tiger JK also suffers from Myelitis which is a disease involving inflammation of the spinal cord, which disrupts central nervous system functions linking the brain and limbs. Despite all of this and his grandmothers passing away he has still continued to plug away and bring us his raw emotion via his music.

I personally will never download any of his music. I will continue to purchase his music and do what I can to support him. After all, he helped create a movement…

For those of you who only stick to Kpop and Jpop… you are completely missing out on a whole other world of fantastic music and you will be sorry that you did.

Please support him and buy his album here… do not download his music.

To support Dabo and his insane style of Japanese Rap you can click here.