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UPSETTING DAY

Upsetting Day: The CCP Rap šŸŒ­

The birth, sterilization, and death of slang is a fun cycle. According to my staff, ā€œbangerā€ has about two weeks left. Iā€™m proud to bring you the last banger.

Wait, whatā€™s that at the bottom?

Iā€™m in.

Hip-hop and government go together like ice cream and rat poison: perfectly. My party playlist has two songs. The first is Streyer campaign anthem ā€œBack Dat Azz Up,ā€ a drowning candidateā€™s call to black lifeguards. If courting black voters with a twerk anthem sounds like a bad idea, you missed the peak of history. Juvenile rang in the American Empireā€™s retirement. The other song is ā€œThe Trailblazer,ā€ which celebrates the job opening.

Granted, Iā€™m as biased as any Amnesty International donor. Iā€™m still on a list for telling Dick Cheney to go hunting alone. So Iā€™ll let CGTN introduce their work:

You might not be familiar with CGTN, since itā€™s banned in touchier countries. Itā€™s a great channel for human interest stories and forced confessions. As an apocalypse junkie, finding a CGTN rap video is like combining Christmas and labor camp parole into one holiday.

First, note the gentle offer to install a state media app on your personal device. Privacy isnā€™t the issueā€“ domestic tycoons harvested your SSN, nudes, and blood type ten years ago. Weā€™re all ants on the world stage, beneath the notice of the giants wrestling overhead. But now youā€™re on an NSA list titled ā€œDangerous Morons.ā€ Youā€™ll never get another job more important than scarecrow.

The copy marries cutesy marketing and ultranationalism. Iā€™ll never find ā€œmeteoric riseā€ and ā€œgroove to the beatā€ in the same sentence again. Alone, marketing drones would say ā€œBored? Check out this fire command economics bop!ā€ Alone, ultranationalists would say ā€œä½ å€‘ēš„ę—¶ä»£å·²ēµęŸäŗ†ļ¼Œę±‰å ”ē˜¾å›å­å€‘ć€‚ä½ å€‘ēŽ°åœØč®Šęˆę°å…‹ę–Æę“¾ę“›ē”µå½±ēš„å·„åŽ‚ć€‚ā€* Together, they say weā€™re in for an amazing time.

*Your time is over, burger addicts. You are now a factory for Jack Sparrow films.

That said, the title gets a rose. ā€œThe Trailblazerā€ is killer branding. Difficult to promote in 32 second-language bars, but it has the right tone. Fans and critics of single-party surveillance states agree on one thing: itā€™s where weā€™re all headed. Letā€™s meet our stars:

Our first state poet is Forster Asare-Yeboah, a Ghana-born, U.K.-raised, Chengdu-enriched rapper. Heā€™s internet-famous enough for 1.8 million Weibo followers, and normal-famous enough to rap in clubs. If that makes his presence here confusing, your soul is intact. Flee these benighted lands and return on Punching Day.

Forsterā€™s the black part of our ā€œSino-African rap song,ā€ and way too mediocre for propaganda. You should be either too inept to take seriously (Rambo III) or too majestic to reject (Rambo: First Blood Part II). The American Sniper zone is dangerous. Audiences start asking which wars were officially declared, and what uranium cake was imaginary. Youā€™ll never see a C+ Saudi drama about Jamal Khashoggi.

As youā€™ll soon see, free education is the luckiest card Forster could have drawn. Itā€™s a natural 20. ā€œThere were less schools, and now there are moreā€ requires zero spin or disappearing actresses. So itā€™s odd that he whiffs it. Iā€™ve heard more energetic eulogies. Forster makes the most absolute truth in this song sound like bullshit, before losing interest and skimming over surveillance-friendly tech.

As for motive, I get it. Forster likes life with a pool and without a cellmate. Iā€™d cheerlead most despots for a PS4. Thatā€™s not a typo, I want to replay Bloodborne.

On to The Trailblazerā€™s thesis:

I love ā€œChina Made Itā€ on three levels. Itā€™s not a total reversal, so it feels incomplete. I end up staring at the phrase like a punchline without a setup or nouns. Itā€™s also a comeback to a dead joke, ten years too late to parry blonde pundits. We know that subpar imports start with nonexistent American budgets. Finally, it treats total manufacturing dominance like an old shame. Imagine a defiant German freestyle called ā€œPrinting Press These Nuts.ā€

The delivery hereā€™s extra stilted, which fits a pet theory of mine. Itā€™s pure conjecture, but Iā€™m fucking right. Thereā€™s a lyrical quirk youā€™ll often find among low-tier black rappers on clean songs: awkward two-beat pauses or ad-libs. Thatā€™s withdrawal from using rapā€™s favorite filler.

It pops up here. Call me a madman. But somewhere on a CGTN hard drive, ā€œThe Trailblazer: Drill Mixā€ exists. When they release it, the future is theirs.

Iā€™ve waited thirty years for this moment. The exact second the word ā€œhaterā€ entered international relations. Thereā€™s no undoing this. The seal is broken. Before the first bomb falls, an Indian diplomat will call a Pakistani general a dickrider. The CIA will contest the authenticity of Putinā€™s shoes. Mauritania will tell the world to ā€œemancipate some bitches.ā€

Donā€™t fight the spiral. Embrace it. President Curtis Jackson III is the right man to lead us into the new world. Diss diplomacy canā€™t be stopped, but it can be perfected. A man that wonā€™t stop tormenting Ja Rule wonā€™t stop fighting for you.

Enough of the first verse. Thatā€™s not why Iā€™m here.

In 1999, Forgot About Dre introduced Eminem to black people, creating a crossover star. The Trailblazer does that for Saina, the worldā€™s best propaganda rapper named Saina. We are living in her moment.

Listing ethnicity after every name is odd, but Iā€™m sure that wonā€™t matter later. Weā€™re here for 16 bars of party dominance.

Breathe it in. Figuratively, especially if youā€™re in Beijing. Meet our generationā€™s Nas.

This woman is my fucking hero. She raps the way a twelve-year-old heelflips off a roof. You know sheā€™ll shatter every bone in her body, and so does she. It changes nothing. She doesnā€™t give a shit. She has three seconds of midair footage before losing both knees forever, and sheā€™s milking all of them.

Look into her eyes. I donā€™t have the social skills to tell you if she believes in this message. But sheā€™s burning life force to sell it. The Minitrue agent directing asked her to take it down to twelve, and she called him a traitor. If Saina isnā€™t promoted to Head Rap Inquisitor, thereā€™s no justice in the Jinping administration.

Why does she suck? Does she know she sucks? These are the questions of a hater. The party is creating a utopia where all bars have value. In The Peopleā€™s Source, every album is Food & Liquor.

Take notes, Forster. Thatā€™s the electric enthusiasm I want to see when you lie to my face.

Iā€™m sitting in Mother Natureā€™s greatest enemy, writing about her second greatest enemy. Quick question for everyone outside the arms race: when an American or Chinese outlet mentions climate change, do you want to choke us with our own plastic? Itā€™s the old Eric Andre joke, only Hannibal Buress is ā€œevery island nation.ā€

Because of my backwards hater education, Iā€™d worry about what historians would say. Saina knows there wonā€™t be any. That lets her throw every ounce of nontalent in her body into each line.

Though I do wonder where a state media channel found a rap genius. Did they black-bag someone at a karaoke bar, or recruit internally?

I forgot that Hotdog jokes warp reality. Letā€™s try a little harder: Itā€™d be hilarious if she did uncensored rap covers on her personal channel.

Iā€™m definitely using this power for evil. My next articleā€™s about the gut-busting time an overeducated shitposter became president, saved the biosphere, and reignited a lost love. And then Saina rapped about it. 

The cover is perfection itself, by the way. Like Tyshawn Jones, she throws her whole body into it and drops n-bombs at will. Sheā€™s also a fan of Saweetie, which she saves for the real heads on Facebook:

Those lyrics require a certain presence. Namely ā€œNot Saina.ā€ She delivers ā€œLow carbon China is realā€ and ā€œslide over my pantiesā€ with the same blank energy. And yes, the bombs keep falling:

I complain, but I love this era. Think of all the visionaries that made a Chinese reporter dropping American slurs for international paypigs possible. Archimedes. Cai Lun. Alan Turing. Saweetie. Shame about the Arctic, but this is an age of miracles.

Nothing could ruin this channel for me, except a propaganda tour through Xinjiang or WAIT NO FUCKā€“

Thatā€™s enough. Letā€™s get this under control. Otherwise weā€™ll end up with an Uyghur rapper blinking ā€œtortureā€ at the camera. I refuse to speak that evil into the garden of reality.

They wouldnā€™t. No one has the balls.

Iā€™m back in. Letā€™s go to hell together, Sardar.

Our state-sponsored rap group has a confident mumbler and a loud lunatic. Meaning itā€™s time for a propaganda technician. Thatā€™s right, Sardar knows youā€™re allowed to rhyme two syllables. Strap in for the GZA of ethnic cleansing.

Oh man.

Lyrical spiritual miracles thrive with twisty language, engaging flows, and a hardcore antiestablishment ethos. This is a half-speed Dr. Seuss audiobook about loving the government. Iā€™m glad he knows assonance exists, but rapwashing your own genocide needs a flow switch or two. Even the most Xanaxā€™d preteen on BandCamp can churn out triplets. You have to go harder to convince me the cameramanā€™s unarmed.

Maybe Iā€™m biased. Letā€™s try the Socratic method: Sardar, can nothing in Xinjiang stop anyone from being who they want to be? At this moment? In every U.N. report? Good propaganda appeals to and redirects reason. Bluntly saying two and two equal five leads to marching and aerodynamic bricks.

Maybe I should go easy on Sardar. When youā€™re invited to record a propaganda rap, the only answers are ā€œIā€™d love toā€ and ā€œSic Semper Tyrannis.ā€ Like Forster, he simply wants to eat nice food with solid fingers. But thereā€™s an old French word for enablers of a purge: fuckface.

Beyond the body bags in the background? These lines still suck. ā€œBenefits from new policyā€ tastes like boot in every genre. Gojira could scream it backwards in 4/11 time and my brain would still reject it. 

If you pay attention, ā€œThe Trailblazerā€ has a few first draft mistakes. Theyā€™re tucked in the margins of the lyrics, beat production, shot selection, video editing, ethnic labels, the credits only listing Saina, leaving the comments open to American trolls, and concept. Thatā€™s the beauty of this genre: OpressionCore upgrades bugs from features to homegrown innovations. The Censorate is a lifetime appointment for fuckups.

Imagine revision in a propaganda studio. You canā€™t tell your manager ā€œFun idea, but the best rapper sounds like Ice Spiceā€™s hostage tape. I know we flanked her with fluent English speakers, but what they have in adverbs they lose in corpse-like dispassion and youth ministry flow.ā€ Youā€™ll do the reshoots in a labor camp, with your race on the corner of the screen.

Editing matters. Backspace separates 2002 and 2022 Rowling. My drafts are half Gundam jokes before my shock collar goes off. Worse yet, this track review had three pages about my dad. Thanks to revision, that love of authority is now graceful subtext.

Treasure your delete key. Itā€™s a privilege, like your former Miranda Rights.

Shoutout to the party for letting me groove to the beat of their meteoric rise in street cred. Not that they needed it. Nothingā€™s more authentic than wanton violence, and the sterilization of Xinjiang Muslims is stillā€“

image credit: Mo & Robots

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Sarcophski, who to our knowledge has almost never rapped propaganda for an authoritarian regime.

9 replies on “Upsetting Day: The CCP Rap šŸŒ­”

Sorry, Shakespeare – “Climate change is big deal/Low-carbon China is real” is the greatest English couplet now.

I studied Chinese over a decade ago and barely ever used it since, so I’m far from fluent. I have no idea how you’d say the n-word but I remember enough to recognize that the translation in that second Facebook screenshot just totally skipped over it. Make whatever you will of that I guess.

I’m not looking up the what Chinese slang is used for the n-word either but the whole thing is cleaned up. “You know I like it nasty” turned into “You know I like directness.”

“Just slide over my panties” turned into “[You] can jump right to the topic”

N-word taken out of the first line of the next one, now it’s just “Put gas in the jet” followed by, as I pointed out in my own comment, “lookin’ at my titty while I’m tanning” turning into “other people watch me sunbathe.”

It’s a tragedy, I tells ya. A tragedy!

I’m so disappointed that Saina’s Chinese translation on those screenshots is sanitized. Come on, Saina, let all the little grannies know that other people aren’t just watching you sunbathe, they’re watching your titties while you sunbathe.

Also, the Jack Sparrow bit is in traditional characters. Taiwan and HK use those. China uses simplified. Not that most people would know or care, but a Chinese ultranationalist would use simplified. Less upset about addict ending up being an old term for heroin/opium addicts because eh.

I remember hearing a rap song in German years ago, where they just said ā€œhaterā€ in English Iā€™m the middle of the line. It blew my mind, because it felt like, if any country should have a term for ā€œhaterā€, itā€™s Germany.

You’d think…

But Germany has been desperately trying to dissociate themselves from anything remotely reminiscent of National Socialism since the end of WWII…

It would not surprise me if they doctored their own language so you can’t even SAY “hater” in German.

That was awesome! Dennard is quickly becoming one of my favorites here.

I am both proud, and humbled, to be the Hot Dog Supreme who brought this high-nitrate treat to the world. šŸ™‚

ā€œHip-hop and government go together like ice cream and rat poison: perfectly.ā€
OR
ā€œPrinting Press These Nutsā€
OR
ā€œFist fights in Edenā€

Hard call which is my favorite Dayle line consumed in the past 24 hrs, so itā€™s fortunate the election is rĢ·iĢ·gĢ·gĢ·eĢ·dĢ·.

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