RAPPERS FUSING CULTURES

Picture this－in a quaint Beijing hutong and courtyard, a group of ebullient, foreign-looking youngsters are seen clad in Chinese martial arts clothing. They rap and dance with great panache while brandishing long sticks and nunchuks from time to time, oozing charisma.

This is from a music video of Unfazed, an up-and-coming Beijing-based rap quartet.

The visual marriage of hip-hop and kungfu, together with the Bruce Lee's film sounds heard on their 2020 album Celestial, immediately evokes the legendary New York rap group Wu-Tang Clan, who named themselves after the 1983 movie Shaolin and Wu-Tang, and laced their raw, grimy music with old kungfu film sounds in their 1993 seminal album Enter the Wu-Tang Clan (36 Chambers).

East and West, the twain was ingeniously merged in Wu-Tang's music and inspired curiosity about and love for Asian culture in millions of westerners. Citing Wu-Tang Clan as one of their musical influences, the budding rap group says they aspire to make music that fuses cultures and unites East and West.

Growing up as third-culture kids

What shapes the group's musical aspiration largely comes down to their shared experience as third-culture children.

"There are many people in the West growing up in the East but are not fully from the East. We're all third-culture kids growing up in Beijing, a city that sits deeply in our hearts, but we're not fully from here," said Laurence Carrol Brahm (aka LB the Dragon), the group's leader and producer.

Consisting of two brothers, Laurence and Robert Brahm, along with their friends Yousif Khairi and Daniel Nwosu (aka EUDAIMONIA), Unfazed got together around October 2020, reincarnating from the eponymous group Laurence had formed back in high school.

Born to a Chinese mother and an American father, Laurence, 19, and Robert, 15, grew up in Beijing, the former now studying filmmaking in Los Angeles while the latter a tenth grader at an international school in the Chinese capital.

Khairi, 18, hails from Sudan. His father, a businessman came to study Chinese at Nanjing University in 1981. His family settled in Beijing in 2005 after having spent three years in South Korea. Now Khairi is a first-year medical student at Ningbo University.

Nwosu, 20, a Nigerian whose parents are diplomats, grew up in a series of postings such as Tokyo, Beijing, and Houston. In 2018, he moved back to China, taking Chinese lessons for a year in Changchun. Now he is in his second year studying mechanical engineering at Beijing Institute of Technology.

"One of the essential aspects of hip-hop music is expressing your identity, where you're from, and the culture you grew up in," said Laurence, noting that having been brought up in various cultures can be an advantage for the group to stand out.

As much as the young rap artist describes his music as an exploration and an expression of his own identity of being half Chinese and half American, Laurence had not realized that he could utilize the Asian element in music until he got inspired by Scovv, a popular American rap artist formerly based in Beijing. In 2019, Laurence, a fledgling filmmaker directed Scovv's music video Shank! which features Beijing's ancient architecture and street scenes.

Cognizant of a long-standing interest in Asian culture in the West, the group realized Chinese culture, particularly kungfu, can help set them apart from hip-hop artists in the West.

Meanwhile, Chinese youths have also been embracing hip-hop culture ever since the 2017 viral reality TV show The Rap of China thrust hip-hop music into the country's mainstream pop culture.

The show, with a staggering 2.68 billion views, catapulted many hip-hop artists such as Zhou Yan and Mao Yanqi (whose stage names are GAI and VaVa, respectively) into stardom. Young people are seen sporting hip-hop fashion en masse, and a slew of words and phrases used by hip-hop stars like "diss", "freestyle", and "keep real" have entered the popular lexicon.

That the East and the West share mutual interest in each other's culture pumps great confidence in the group. "We're kind of standing in the middle, uniting both sides," Laurence said, with pride.

Furthermore, highlighting the fusion of cultures within music is crucial in this increasingly divided world, said Laurence. "We need that more than anything in terms of bringing the world together."

A shared passion for hip-hop

Influenced by a medley of hip-hop artists, young and old, such as Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, Young M.A, Young Thug, and Lil Tjay, Unfazed, shy of a year old, has shown unstoppable enthusiasm for making music. They have so far dropped one album and two EPs along with a bevy of singles and EPs produced by members separately.

"The chemistry is great because we are not forced to make music like groups that are put together by a label. Things just happen organically," Laurence said. "It's one of the greatest things about this group."

The group's vigorous creativity is also associated with their shared love of hip-hop music. All developed a keen interest in the genre at a young age.

Aged eight or nine, Laurence was beckoned into this music genre and its culture through hiphop-themed documentaries and films such as Michael Jackson's This Is It, Eight Mile, and Stomp the Yard. The boy has since started learning to rap and hip-hop dance; videos of him dancing abound in his Instagram feed.

In high school, he formed Unfazed, a rap group as well as a records studio, and released an album.

"Growing up I saw my brother do music with his friends, which made me want to try," said Robert, whose brother encouraged him to try and bought him all the recording equipment. The youngster then turned the small bathroom in his courtyard into a studio, where he keeps practicing and recording after school. Last December, he released his solo EP Cold Nights in the East.

Like Robert, Nwosu and Khairi, also attribute their initial interest in hip-hop to the influence of their hip-hop-obsessed siblings.

Nwosu recalled it's My Life, a hit song by top-selling rap artist Lil Wayne which he heard from his sister's mixtape that drew him to rap. "I loved the song and had it on repeat for like 20 times. Then I started writing my own raps," said Nwosu, who also spent some of his formative years in Houston, Texas, a city known for its vibrant hip-hop scene.

Khairi, obsessed with pop rap, is often heard singing their songs' melodic hooks. The youngest child in his family, Khairi got into hip-hop around 10 years old thanks to sibling influence. However, it wasn't until five months ago that he started recording with Laurence. "When I met these guys, they got me into recording. Now I'm in love with it," he said.

Determined to make it

"Told my Mom I'm gonna make it. It's hard but I gotta face it!"

As the group repeated the refrains of their song Make It in a recent concert in Beijing, the enthusiastic crowd, consisting largely of the city's international high schoolers, cheered, gyrated, and sang along.

Unabashed about asserting their musical ambition, the young rap ensemble, brimming with passion and creativity, seems quite clear about what ingredients they need for making it.

Love is a must. "It takes true love and passion or making music can drive you crazy," said Laurence, who mentioned hours after hours spent on recording and editing music videos are part and parcel of his hobby.

Practice and dedication are another two key ingredients. "A rap artist is so much like a kungfu practitioner," Khairi said. "They both need to keep sharpening their craft every day."

However, like many other aspiring young artists, the rap group is looking for platforms to shine.

They now have had their songs available on various international music-streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, and QQ Music. Besides, the group leader said they have also considered participating in rap talent shows like Rap for the Youth, a highly rated show produced by Bilibili, a video-sharing site popular among China's Gen-Z.

Still uncertain about whether non-Chinese youths like them are eligible for the show, Laurence is already on his way to connecting with the Chinese audience. The young rapper said he will soon release several songs in which he will rap in both Chinese and English, a way to express his identity as well as honor his biracial heritage.

"In the future, I plan to make more songs that are fully in Chinese to reach out to the fully Chinese audience," he said.

At last, Unfazed members need to stay unfazed. "Unfazed means not to be bothered by anything going on around you, whether it be negative energy or negative comments, and just stay in your own lane," said the group leader.