Celebrate the Year of the Tiger With These 10 Hip Hop Artists
Too busy to get your daily dose of RADII? We got you every Tuesday with a summary of all the freshest takes on China’s youth culture in the last week.
- From Waka Flocka Flame to Afroman to Khalid and Jack Harlow: We give you 10 hip hop artists born in the Year of the Tiger.
- To celebrate Lunar New Year, we're introducing an excellent compilation of covers of some of China's most prominent singers and groups, among other auditory treats.
- Curious which Chinese athletes you should watch during the Winter Olympics? Here, we introduce you to our favorite athletes on Team China.
- Beijing 2022 medal favorite Eileen Gu is a world champion freestyle skier, model, cultural ambassador, and so much more.
- At 17 years old, China's Su Yi ming is tied for the youngest athlete ever to win a medal in an Olympic Games snowboarding event.
Intrigued? Keep scrolling, my friend.
10 Famous Hip Hop Artists Born in the Year of the Tiger
Hip hop has been a guiding light for many, giving people from all walks of life a platform to express themselves on their terms.
The music genre and cultural movement kicked off in the 1970s in New York and gained widespread popularity from the 1980s onward.
One of hip hop’s defining characteristics has been challenging the status quo, which has dramatically influenced society through the power of lyrics and hypnotic beats.
(Editor’s note: We’ve been liberal with the definition of ‘hip hop artist’ and have included some musicians whose music is inspired by hip hop and/or features elements of the genre.)
With the 2022 Winter Olympics now underway, people in China are looking beyond the world-class athletes and exciting sporting events and getting amped about a seemingly unlikely hero: Beijing Game’s mascot Bing Dwen Dwen.
The panda-inspired character has been a hit on Chinese social media: The hashtag for the mascot has been trending on Weibo, accumulating more than 2.6 billion views.
Designed by Cao Xue, Bing Dwen Dwen is a panda wrapped in an ‘ice shell’ and was chosen as the official mascot from more than 5,800 design submissions worldwide.
5 Top Spots to Ice Skate and Ski in the City of Beijing
Time to lace up your skates and hit the ice. Ready for some wintergames of your own?
From the scenic Summer Palace Ice Park to an indoor ski hill, we take you to some of the best spots in China's capital to stay active during the cold winter months (and soak in the atmosphere of the Winter Olympics)!
Chinese Hip Hop Pioneer Brings Tiger Energy to the Mic
J-Fever was born in the Year of the Tiger in the ’80s and is one of the original hip hop pioneers in China.
Today, hip hop is everywhere in the country, from state-sponsored TV shows like Rap of China to brands embracing the culture to stay relevant. But 20 years ago, when J-Fever was first getting into freestyling and battling, he felt very alone.
“I feel like it was a new encounter, like a road I’ve never been down before,” he says. The industry has grown up around him throughout his career, but he always continued exploring. His travels, from Peru to Japan, have inspired his work.
Freestyle has always been an essential aspect of his music, so much so that he helped establish an app called Bluegrass to bring young rappers online during Covid. He has focused on bringing up young talent and even battling with them from Japan, where he was stuck during the early days of the pandemic.
The image of a tiger seems fierce, he says, but it can also be gentle and protective: The jaws of a tiger can provide security, like in the case of a cat carrying a kitten.
- Team China has clinched its first gold medal in short-track speed skating at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. The team won the brand-new mixed-gender 2,000-meter team relay at Beijing's Capital Indoor Arena on Saturday.
- Eileen Gu won Gold for Team China on Tuesday at the women’s freeski big air event in Beijing, landing her first-ever 1620 in competition on her final run to topple France’s Tess Ledeux.
- While not a scientifically rooted discipline, astrology is a cultural phenomenon in both East and West. Learn more about these two zodiac systems and how their interpretations compare when examined side by side.
- Tech giant Tencent is again under fire for its notoriously demanding work culture after honoring an employee who worked 20 hours nonstop.
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