General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 202612 min read

Rap of China (中国新说唱)

Rap of China (中国新说唱) is a Chinese rap competition reality show produced by the streaming platform iQiyi. It first aired in 2017 under the title 中国有嘻哈 ("China Has Hip-Hop"), became a decisive moment in the mass popularization of hip-hop in mainland China, and was renamed 中国新说唱 for its 2018 season after state regulators moved to restrict hip-hop culture on screen.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Original title and debut	中国有嘻哈 ("China Has Hip-Hop"), iQiyi, 2017; 12 episodes in the first season¹^•³
Season 1 reach	About 2.5 billion online views for the first season according to Chinese media reports; a reported 2.99 billion cumulative plays and 220 million views for a single episode on iQiyi¹^•⁴
Season 1 winners	Co-champions GAI and PG One¹
2018 renaming	Chinese title changed from "China Has Hip-Hop" (嘻哈, xiha) to "China Has 'Shuochang'" (说唱), a term that also refers to traditional forms of storytelling¹
Regulatory context	Hip-hop censorship announced January 19, 2018 by SAPPRFT; a 2018 directive told broadcasters not to feature tattooed artists or those representing hip-hop⁵^•¹
Later champions	艾热 (Air) in 2018; later seasons produced 杨和苏 and 李佳隆, among others⁶^•⁷
Recent season	新说唱2025 premiered June 7, 2025, ran 12 episodes, and crowned SHarK (米尔艾力) as champion; its iQiyi heat value passed 9,500 within 24 hours of premiere⁸

Spoilers

Plot

Season 1 (2018)

The series is a retooled continuation of 2017's 《中国有嘻哈》, renamed after hip-hop culture drew regulatory scrutiny. The premise stays the same: find the best Chinese-language rapper alive. The scale changes everything. Instead of 778 signups, the show holds auditions across North America, Australia, Malaysia, and a hundred Chinese universities, drawing 10,725 hopefuls, of whom fewer than 1% reach filming; 68 perform in the 60-second knockout round. Kris Wu, the season's music chief consultant, sits at the center of the judges' desk and becomes the season's meme engine: he presses FAIL for anyone off beat, insists rhythm is "the soul of rap music," and popularizes "skr," an imitation of a car's screeching brakes, as a universal exclamation.¹⁷ The producers are split into three camps: Kris Wu alone, Zhang Zhenyue with MC HotDog, and Will Pan with G.E.M., whose addition was justified by an algorithm claiming her fanbase overlapped more than 90% with Will Pan's.¹⁸

The season's theme is "I'm Young, I Rap," and the show pushes rap toward Chinese subject matter: dialect verses in Beijing, Sichuan, and Shanghai drawls, and lyrics about the Silk Road, Chinese food, and kung fu.¹⁹ Contestants grind through cyphers, one-on-one battles, and team productions, with eliminations every round and a resurrection mechanic that lets the audience vote a fallen rapper back in.

The moment the season is remembered by is Air's resurrection run. Air (艾热), eliminated mid-season, returns through the revival round and goes on a five-win streak, "五杀," that fans talk about as a mythic run, then walks into the October 6, 2018 finale and wins three straight head-to-head rounds, the "三杀," to take the gold ring and gold microphone as season champion.¹⁹ Along the way the season minted hits: 《星球坠落》, his duet with Li Jialong (李佳隆), topped QQ Music, NetEase Cloud Music, Kugou, and Kuwo, became a top Douyin background sound, and collected more than 80,000 comments on NetEase; 《目不转睛》 held the Douyin music chart's top spot for a month.¹⁹^•²⁰

Season 2 (2019)

The format holds, the talent pool refills, and the show becomes the only variety program of the first half of 2019 whose all-network heat score crossed 100, doing so four times over a 78-day run that spent 50 days at number one on the cumulative chart.²¹ Contestant Fox (福克斯) tops the newcomer chart for 46 days with 53.3% positive feedback, and the season's story arc belongs to Yang Hesu (杨和苏), a returning "almost-champion" who finally closes the deal. In the finale he performs 《命不由天》 ("My Fate Is Not Heaven's to Decide") and wins the title on a combined score of 62.7, built from 39.7 points on the rap ranking board plus 23 live votes.²¹ The season also produces an accidental crossover smash: contestant Gem (宝石gem) and his 《野狼disco》 content racks up 230 million Douyin plays, turning a northeastern-flavored rap novelty into a national singalong.²¹

Season 3 (2020)

By 2020 the rap-competition field is crowded, and the show leans hard on returning faces and internet celebrities. Familiar contestants Li Daben (李大奔), Vinida (万妮达), Li Jialong, Wang Qiming (王齐铭), and Xiao Bai (小白) all come back, and viral streamers like Yao Shui Ge and Giao Ge get generous screen time, to the annoyance of critics who say the rap essence is being diluted.²²^•²³ The producers are now Kris Wu, GAI, Jane Zhang (张靓颖), and Will Pan, and the final four come one from each camp: Li Jialong, Wang Qiming, GALI, and Kafe.Hu.²⁴ In the semifinal, Li Jialong eliminates GALI by a single vote, then seals the title with 《回忆垃圾桶》 ("Memory Trash Can"); Wang Qiming takes runner-up in a widely called upset, GALI and the revived Li Daben tie for the series' first-ever shared third place, breaking the pattern that a resurrected contestant always wins, and Kafe.Hu places fourth despite owning the season's hottest song, 《经济舱》 ("Economy Class"), which tops NetEase Cloud's charts for two straight weeks.²⁵^•²⁴ The season's viral moments skew absurd: "想要成为rap star吗" ("Want to become a rap star?") and "画画的baby," the latter covered by celebrities from Fan Chengcheng to Pan Changjiang, Lu Han, and Xie Na.²⁵ After the finale, Kris Wu founds the label 20XXCLUB with his contestants.²⁵

The pause and the return (2021–2025)

After 2020, iQIYI shelves the new-talent format for three years, running the all-star 《中国说唱巅峰对决》 instead, and relaunches the rookie competition with 《新说唱2024》, where Nomim's shout-out to Xie Di becomes a short-video meme hitting the hot search main list 32 times in ten days, and Henan Rap God's 《工厂》 MV draws over 6.35 million Bilibili plays.²⁶ 《新说唱2025》, the IP's ninth year, goes big: the youngest producer lineup ever (Huang Zitao, Yan Haoxiang, Vinida, Tizzy T, Capper) with Che Zhe back as director, a "哈圈洗牌" (reshuffling the rap scene) theme, and ten veteran "Golden Demon King" OGs including Huang Xu, Paike Te, and Nawuke Re waiting to be called out.²⁷^•²⁸ The chain-based selection is savage: 232 contestants fight for 42 bronze chains, roughly one-in-six odds, with a Call Out "chain-snatching" rule; newcomer DOMMIU Li Youyin calls out the veteran TSP and passes unanimously.²⁸ In the August 24, 2025 finale, SHarK (米尔艾力) wins the title over runner-up Deng Dianguo DDG and third-place TopBarry, with his song 《依然很美丽》 advocating for minority groups; Vinida and Yan Haoxiang's Underdog team takes the champion team title.²⁷

Characters

Kris Wu (吴亦凡): pop superstar, music chief consultant of the early seasons, and the show's most quotable judge. His FAIL button, his "skr," and his China-chic anthem 《天地》 define the 2018 season's identity; he later founded the label 20XXCLUB with his contestants.
Air / 艾热: the 2018 champion from Xinjiang, a technically flawless rapper whose elimination-to-five-kill resurrection run is the series' signature storyline.
Li Jialong (李佳隆): melodic rapper, co-creator of 《星球坠落》 in 2018, who returns in 2020 and wins the whole thing by one vote.
GAI: the 2017 champion who returns as a producer in 2020, mentoring Wang Qiming to the runner-up spot.
Yang Hesu (杨和苏): the 2019 champion, a returning finalist whose victory song 《命不由天》 completed a two-year arc.
Kafe.Hu: the 2020 season's critical darling, fourth place but author of the year's biggest song, 《经济舱》.
SHarK (米尔艾力): the 2025 champion, whose finale song supporting minority groups capped the show's most socially conscious season.

Interpretations and controversies

The franchise's core controversy is originality. Korea's 《Show Me The Money》 publicly stated that the 2017 predecessor's producers never purchased rights, pointing to similarities in logo, stage, and format design.²² The second controversy is decline: Douban scores fell from 7.2 for the 2017 original (over 47,000 ratings) to 5.0, 5.3, and 5.0 for the 2018, 2019, and 2020 seasons, with critics blaming returning "回锅肉" contestants and meme-bait casting like Giao Ge for diluting the rap.²²^•²³ The irony stung in 2020, when rival shows 《说唱新世代》 (8.6) and 《说唱听我的》 (7.0) beat the original franchise on reputation while trailing it in raw traffic.²² The renaming from 中国有嘻哈 to 中国新说唱, keeping the English title unchanged, is widely read as a response to the 2018 regulatory climate around hip-hop culture.¹⁸

Sequels, spin-offs, and adaptations

The 2017 original 《中国有嘻哈》 is effectively season zero. The main line continued through 2019 and 2020, then pivoted to the all-star spin-off 《中国说唱巅峰对决》 (2022–2023) before relaunching as 《新说唱2024》 and 《新说唱2025》, with a tenth anniversary season announced.²⁶^•²⁷ The franchise also spawned a streetwear brand, "Rich," which grew from about 200 SKUs in 2017 to 300 in 2018, and the agency "刺猬兄弟," which signed contestants to one-year exclusive deals.²⁹

The first season, 2017

The first season relied on judge star power to draw an audience, most prominently Kris Wu (吴亦凡), a Chinese Canadian singer and former member of the K-pop group EXO. His deadpan question to a contestant in episode one, "Do you have freestyle?", became an internet meme, in part because viewers doubted Wu's rap credentials.¹

The competition format took underground rappers, many of whom had performed for small audiences in bars, and made them household names. The first-round audition attracted over 1,000 participants.⁹ Reported figures convey the scale of attention: the show's heat peak rose 556-fold after broadcast, the 70 contestants collectively gained 20.85 million Weibo followers, the show appeared on hot-search lists 461 times, and the word "freestyle" was mentioned over 100 million times on Weibo.¹⁰ The season earned a 7.2 rating on Douban.⁴

Two winners emerged: GAI and PG One. GAI won with a song called "Not Friendly," in classic battle fashion dissing unnamed rivals. Viewers and rappers also criticized the show: some compared its production, audition format, golden chains, and set design to the South Korean contest Show Me the Money, and the judge Chang eliminated the Shanghai-based rapper Al Rocco on the grounds that his rap was all in English. Al Rocco responded with a diss track titled "China X Hip-Hop."⁹^•¹

Censorship and the 2018 renaming

The show's success coincided with a regulatory turn. On January 19, 2018, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television (SAPPRFT) announced hip-hop censorship at a press conference, after hip-hop went viral in 2017 on the back of the show.⁵ In 2018, censors issued a directive telling the entertainment industry not to feature artists with tattoos and those who represent hip-hop or any other subculture. GAI missed a scheduled appearance on a popular singing competition despite a successful first appearance, and for months no rappers appeared on Chinese variety shows. iQiyi took the entire first season down for a while, and PG One found new releases quickly removed from platforms after the Communist Youth League criticized an old song of his for content that appeared to describe cocaine use.¹ Rapper diss tracks directed at the program and its judges circulated as well, and after the regulator's "four don'ts" policy some fans concluded the show was finished.¹¹

By late summer 2018 a second season was approved under a rebrand. The English name stayed the same, but the Chinese title changed from "China Has Hip-Hop" to "China Has 'Shuochang'" (说唱), a word that also refers to traditional forms of Chinese storytelling. Scholars have read the change as replacing the hip-hop (嘻哈) subculture reference with the specific practice of rap, an effort to conform to censorship lines and rebrand the show as distinctly Chinese.¹^•¹² The production team has also given a plainer rationale: rap is only one element of hip-hop culture, so the broader label was imprecise.⁴ Under the new terms, hip-hop could proceed but had to stay away from mentions of drugs and sex. Nathanel Amar, a researcher of Chinese pop culture at the French Centre for Research on Contemporary China, described the outcome as regulators successfully co-opting hip-hop artists: popularity on television required respecting the red lines.¹

Later seasons and spin-offs

The renamed series became an iQiyi summer fixture. The 2018 season crowned 艾热 (Air), and later editions produced champions including 杨和苏 and 李佳隆, though industry commentary judged that the follow-up seasons, stuck in a talent-development formula, never matched the cultural impact of the 2017 original.⁶^•⁷ The franchise expanded into 少年说唱企划 for newcomers and 中国说唱巅峰对决, a league format for established rappers, while other platforms launched rivals: Tencent Video's 黑怕女孩, Mango TV's 说唱听我的, and Bilibili's 说唱新世代, which earned a Douban score of 9.1.¹³^•⁴

新说唱2025 premiered on June 7, 2025, collected more than 2.6 million pre-broadcast reservations, and passed a heat value of 9,500 on iQiyi within 24 hours, a series record. Across 12 episodes, SHarK (米尔艾力) won the title, and the team led by 万妮达 and 严浩翔 took the champion team honor. The star producer panel of 黄子韬, 万妮达, 严浩翔, TizzyT (谢锐韬), and Capper averaged 28 years old, the youngest lineup among rap shows that year, and the season's narrative shifted from label rivalries toward competition between generations of rappers.⁸^•¹⁴ The franchise has continued with 说唱巅峰对决2026, its ninth season.¹⁵

Cultural impact

The 2017 broadcast is widely treated as the start of rap's mass era in China, sometimes called the genre's "year one," although a functioning underground scene with regional labels, dialect rap, and battle events such as Iron Mic predated it by years.⁶^•⁴ In The Cambridge Companion to Global Rap (2025), the Chinese screen media scholar Sheng Zou argues that airing the show marked a pivotal point in hip-hop's spread to the Chinese mainstream: the subculture was made to fit domestic norms, turned into a commodity, and loaded anew with dominant ideology, while censorship and propaganda demands constrained how mass audiences saw the genre portrayed.²

The mainstreaming reshaped artists' careers. GAI, who won with a battle track, within a few years was singing about China's history on CCTV's Spring Festival Gala in a Qing Dynasty-inspired Tang jacket. Under the content rules, artists have reacted either by embracing patriotic themes or by avoiding politics altogether, and some argue the constraints pushed them toward more original, locally grounded songwriting.¹ Research on the show's co-champions has identified a hybrid "jianghu flow" centered on loyalty, struggle, and compromise as one distinctly Chinese inflection of the genre's authenticity.¹⁶

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026