EYE X "China's Rap Peak Showdown"--The trend is like breaking the bamboo and tempering rap to "make

Like breaking bamboo, tempering rap

On the evening of the 25th of this month, the top league of Chinese music rappers produced by iQIYI, "China Rap Peak Showdown" started to sing. Unknowingly, rap has been with us for six years, and the EYE team has also accompanied the rap show to the sixth place. In the past six years, continuous exploration, breakthrough and bold innovation have ushered in the scene of the peak duel.

This season's new rap is built by well-known rappers in the Chinese music scene, and will form three alliances to fight for the honor of the team, create a rap version of "Three Kingdoms Kill", and deconstruct the Chinese rap map. The theme of "China Rap Showdown" is "I want my Chinese rap to be higher, stronger and more REAL". The rappers will express themselves through different songs and convey the attitude and thinking of this generation of young people to the world. As iQIYI's ace music variety show, the "New Rap in China" series of programs has led waves of rap trends since its inception. Xuan's tacit agreement. This time, iQIYI has prepared an unprecedented rapper top league for the audience, in order to reshape the "peak" state of Chinese rap music, create a Chinese rap "dream team", and break the current bottleneck of Chinese rap.

Che Che, the convener: "In 2017, iQIYI's rap show opened up the first year of rap in China. In the past five years, more and more rap shows have been born. Today, rap is very popular in China. Newcomers have come out in large numbers, and OG has returned. In 2022, I hope to add more fire to Chinese rap, gather heroes from all walks of life in Chinese rap, compete against each other, form alliances, and finally form the 2022 Peak Rap Alliance."

The lighting of this project is led by Mr. Tian Weijun, Mr. Lu Xiaowei and Mr. Zhou Wuwen as the lighting design directors, and Tian Dawei, Yu Yimiao and Yu Yang are the lighting designers.

Time goes back to 2017. In that summer, no one thought that the first wave of the rap banner would bring such a grand scene to youth culture.

"Do you have freestyle?" "Skr~Skr~" "Give me your punchline", "I'll help you sing hook" and other popular phrases are believed to be familiar to the public. In addition, hot words such as real, flow, respect, peace & love are also widely used in people's daily life. The public's acceptance and tolerance of rap culture has also become more enthusiastic with the programs that are launched every year.

"The Rap of China" 2017

iQIYI's first self-made Hip-hop cultural promotion program "The Rap of China" not only allowed people to experience Chinese rap culture, but also allowed a group of young people with bright personalities and true temperaments to appear in the style of music "trendsters". The blood on the stage and the sincerity off the stage are intertwined, and it has become the plot story that people most want to chase. Under the background of the stage beauty special effects, the former draft stage has become a cool movie scene, and the hip-hop players have become the protagonists in front of the camera, telling their beliefs and love.

Under the continuous bold innovation and subversion of the visual director Gong Peng and the team, it is proposed that the stage beauty needs to make movie scenes according to the promotion of the plot, which achieves a different concept of each design and reflects the artistic characteristics of hip-hop culture. In the overall stage design, the color system used tends to be dark and tough, and achieve a sense of hierarchy through the effect of light. Different stage scenes are planned in the theme of each issue, and trains and stations are added to the stage design. concept to form a visual effect with visual coherence. Some designs with a sense of age and time not only meet the needs of different scenes, but also have spatial changes and coherent symbols. Each link will build a new but related stage correspondingly, which has a strong sense of interaction with hip-hop culture. Although each program has different scenes, there is a coherence of visual symbols, and that is the concept of Grand Central Station. The symbolic elements of steam locomotives, railway tracks and stations have a strong industrial sense, which is in line with the growth atmosphere of hip-hop culture, and is full of connotations - connecting the past and the future, nostalgia and innovation. The strong OLD SCHOOI style highlights the rebelliousness and restlessness of HIP POP and makes it more beautiful. The whole program is like shooting a movie, placing the stage, the judges and the audience in a 360° surrounding scene, and everyone can join the show. As Mr. Gong Peng, the visual director of "The Rap of China" said: "The visual effects of this show are to subvert the style and framework of all previous variety shows and create a new Hip-hop style that belongs to China." Considering its effect at the aesthetic and philosophical level, the stage beauty, like the show itself, gives people unprecedented novelty and shock.

"China New Rap" 2018

"China New Rap" 2018 integrates more Chinese cultural elements in the overall sense. The gorgeous collision of Chinese elements and rap music makes rap spread wider and truly accepted by mainstream culture. This merger of "burning, cool, trendy" S+ super network variety show, the show's lighting standard is innovative, and advocates breaking and then standing. This lighting design is mainly reflected in "breaking" and "standing", and "breaking" yourself. The previous use of traditional lamps and the "standing" of new lamps is mainly reflected in the use of laser lamps, and the number of lasers used has created a record of personal design career. Secondly, "break" the traditional stage lighting space design, "stand up" two spaces for a stage, and design a wall of astigmatism ledpar behind the traditional backlighting light stand, thus forming two spaces before and after the stage. The stage background adopts the design form of seeing the light but not the light. A 20x10 square matrix is formed with controllable light strips. Laser lights, beam lights and pattern lights are hidden in each square. How to combine a large number of laser lights with other lamps can show the audience a unique artistic conception in front of the camera. In terms of color matching, it should not be dirty or messy, so as to ensure that the stage picture is clean and can show the lighting effect. Each cue presents a sense of hierarchy according to the needs of the music and players.

"China New Rap" 2019

The 2019 stage art of "China New Rap" has designed a total of 7 major scenes, namely the gymnasium, the field, the Bund rooftop, the subway maintenance workshop, the black shed for the beast fight, the underground parking lot, and the finals. Different from the street elements and station dance scenes in "The Rap of China" that run through 12 issues, the key words to follow in the setting of the visual symbol concept are "no continuation" and "casual nature". The stage setting of "China New Rap" 2019 subverts the traditional stage design concept, allowing rap to return to the original growth environment, and truly realize the close integration of scene and content. For the audience, not only can they feel the freshness from these scenes full of Hip-hop elements, but also have a deeper understanding of the charm of rap culture.

The entire stage of the finals is like a Colosseum. The audience sits around the stage, and the players complete the final battle for the king on it. The 2019 finals of "China New Rap" integrated the "cassette machine" elements into the stage in a way of representing meaning. The combination of retro and modern stage technology gave a new interpretation of the finals stage. The rectangular stage is like a retro "cassette machine", the instructor's seat is the handle, and the barbed wire area on both sides of the stage is the speaker. Compared with the traditional stage, such a stage has a wider vertical vision and can play many long-view pictures. At the beginning of the design, considering the richness of the stage, a total of 160 CNC hoists were used in the finals, which were used to control the rise and fall of the lights and the screen respectively, making the changes in the stage space more complicated and creating a multi-level and multi-performance space with the effect of light and shadow. the stage.

"China New Rap" 2020

The 2020 stage beauty of "China New Rap" breaks the conventional scene-making scheme with a special perspective, and the scene-realization continues to upgrade, so that the lighting has embarked on an unusual road of design exploration. The lighting revolves around the theme of DreamWorks, and is tailored for the new rap with heavy industrial style scene elements with strong industrial-style lighting visual effects. Use the visual voice of young people to carry mainstream values and spread positive energy with youth cultural characteristics.

The stage art is based on the "Dream Factory", and the scene reality will continue to be upgraded. The arrangement of freight cars, train tracks, lifting containers and fuel tanks, the visual collision of red and black, and the heavy industry style all continue and emphasize the underground scene sense of rap. . While continuing the rap culture to set the stage, the stage focuses on the industrial style. Every episode of the show will change the scene, from freight cars, train tracks, lifting containers to fuel barrels, it has the street characteristics of the post-industrial era, and perfectly integrates the art of people's labor and infrastructure scenes with rap culture. In the process of change and invariance, it has achieved thousands of achievements, and restored the authenticity to the greatest extent. The show allows the spirit of Hiphop to travel through the streets in the four scene settings, relying on the space provided by the stage art to give full play to the appeal of the lighting, and pursue rigorous compositional colors in the visual picture. The lights are switched in different scenes, and the digitally controlled light stand with lifting motion adds unexpected excitement to the program. The sense of oppression and release fills the entire stage space, mobilizing the emotions of the players and the audience, and making the atmosphere of the scene to the extreme.

"Youth Rap Project" 2021

"Youth Rap Project" is a Chinese rap innovation industry observation program made by iQIYI. "Can Rap Stars be cultivated?" With this thought in mind, iQIYI established a rap brokerage company, inviting well-known and professional partners in the industry to start a youth rap project, discovering and cultivating new rappers, and subverting traditional rappers growth path. High-tech atmosphere lighting design, personality and trend collide, full of light and shadow atmosphere. The design of different performance stages, various lamp types and multiple sets of numerical control devices makes the changes in the stage space more complex, and uses the effects of light and shadow to create a stage with multiple levels and multiple performance spaces. Confront, break, reset, new blood in rap is being injected...

(Part of the above content and pictures are from official accounts and networks such as Image Knight and China Stage Art Society)

Wonderful appreciation

"China Rap Peak Showdown" 2022

Yesterday evening, the top league of Chinese rappers "China Rap Showdown" started to sing, bringing a shocking stage performance to the audience.

The initial stage of Yang and Su KeyNG brought a rap stage that was different from the previous "combat". They chose to perform this "Harley Quinn" in the form of a stage play, and the stage drama was full of tension.The industry significance of the birth of the rap series is that it not only opened the era of super network comprehensive, but more importantly, it led and accelerated the development direction of my country's youth culture. Rap set sail again this summer, and the momentum is overwhelming. Let's "make waves" together~~ Let's look forward to every wonderful stage together~~