In the 1990s, two cultures crossed paths as they travelled to opposite ends of the earth. In 1993, specifically, nine rappers from New York would release their first album, launching their careers as one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed hip hop groups of all time. The Wu Tang Clan (named after the mountain Wu Dang in central China) were heavily influenced by Chinese culture and martial arts mythology, giving them a style and a sound which infiltrated popular culture through music, films, and fashion for many years to come.<\/p>\n
At roughly the same time, hip hop was leaving American shores and making its way to mainland China. Although hip hop in China began to manifest itself during the early \u201880s, it was almost purely an imitation of the US import, with artists rapping in English rather than in their own languages. This began to change with the arrivals of American hip hop connoisseurs like Kyle Ching<\/a> an\u00a0 Dana Burton<\/a>, whose influence helped Chinese artists to adapt and create a style of their own.<\/p>\n Rhythm & Rhyme<\/strong><\/p>\n As hip hop began to creep its way into microphones across China, the rapping was mostly done in English. For a long time it was believed that Chinese wasn\u2019t a suitable language to rap with, using drastically sentence structuring and rhythm patterns quite different from English, with the main obstacle being that Chinese is a tonal language, where words change meaning according to the pitch used for each syllable. [view video<\/a>]<\/p>\n