Saturday, October 08, 2005

The Long Threatened Ramble About Asian Pop

Since the last time I made stupid observations about Asian pop, I have discovered several things. I have preferences. For example, I will quite happily listen to JJ Lin (林俊傑) or Jay Chou (周傑倫)but I cannot listen to 5566. A friend of mine burned me their latest album, saying that it might help me connect with my students. I've decided that we can connect in other ways, also I don't know if my students would respect me more if I ostentatiously dropped the names of 5566 songs either.

I have noticed that artists like JJ Lin or Jay Chou seem to move between R&B and hip hop, and occasionally rock and roll in a way that I think most American hip hop artists wouldn't do. However, I have been listening to 王力宏's music and there's this one part where he sings in English about how he "still has love for the ghetto." Yeah, Alexander Wang, Michigan represent. I actually started giggling on the street. Furthermore, his final track on the album starts off talking about something that he really likes and finally he says in Chinese, "I really like...MacDonald's." I almost fell over, which would have been bad because I was sitting on the railing of a cliff overlooking the city.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hahaha, (*holding back laughter*) What?! "Not Your Average Thug" is crazy hardcore!! Don't even!! Fo shizzle!! You don't know!! Seriously, the beat grows on you.

The McDonald's song is actually all about McDonald's and they used it for a promotion. He came out with a new version of that song that's more laid back and not as preppy. They play it over video of him walking around while rapping in parts of Shanghai. They also play this video at McDonald's. I can send it to you if you want. You can check out his mad moves. There's this one which I call, "oops, I farted".