The transnational distribution of East-Asian popular
culture to Western audiences by internet platforms
Master thesis in Musicology
Joram Bauwens
Supervisor:
Dr. O. Seibt
3 Table of contents INTRODUCTION ……….. 4 PLATFORM ANALYSES ……… 10 88Rising ……….. 10 Overview of 88Rising ……….. 13
Intention and target audience ………... 14
Categorical content ……….. 17
Analysis ………... 19
Synthesis ……….. 26
JaME / KoME ………... 29
Overview of JaME / KoME ………...…….. 29
Target audience and intention ……….. 32
Categorical content ………... 35
Analysis ……… 36
Synthesis ………... 43
HiphopKR ………... 46
Overview of HiphopKR ……… 47
Target audience and intention……… 48
Categorical content ……….... 49
Analysis ………. 51
Synthesis ……….... 56
OVERALL SYNTHESIS AND DISCUSSION………...……... 58
CONCLUSION……….… 62
4 Introduction
Back in early 2015, a song called ‘It G Ma’ by South-Korean rapper Keith Ape appeared; a hard-hitting hip-hop song featuring five rappers (two Koreans, two Japanese and a Korean-American) who rapped exclusively in Japanese and Korean, with the exception of a few loose English words added for occasional emphasis. The track quickly went viral and amassed tens of thousands of views on YouTube; within a few months, this number had already increased to a few million.1 To me, the initial most interesting point was how a hip-hop song of Asian origin managed to generate such popularity amongst Western audiences. However, at this point I still wondered who Keith Ape was, who had produced the track, and where it had been made. A quick search revealed that it had been produced by Keith Ape himself (real name: Dongheon Lee), who was born in Bundang, South Korea, and co-produced by JuniorChef, another South-Korean hip-hop producer. The song was released through Hi-Lite Records, a South-Korean music label based in Seoul. Finally, the video was directed and produced by a friend of Lee, South-Korean video artist Jan’Qui with simple resources (only a basic camera and simple editing tools) and shot in a room of the IP Boutique Hotel in Seoul’s Itaewon neighbourhood.2
To me, the confirmation that Keith Ape and ‘It G Ma’ were indeed East-Asian was interesting, because it made me wonder through which channels such a song could reach a Western audience on the other side of the world and subsequently become so popular. Although YouTube as distributive internet platform seemed like the obvious answer to this question, I still wondered what the driving forces were behind the popularity of the song; was it because it clearly followed the American trend of ‘trap’ (a specific subgenre marked by deep bass, a sparse beat and idiosyncratic rapping rhythms3) in hip-hop? Or was it because the five rappers in the video took recognisable symbols from contemporary American hip-hop, such as red Styrofoam cups, the do-rag (a piece of headwear occasionally worn by American rappers), and replaced these with makgeolli (a Korean rice wine) and surgical masks, enunciating an image of localised authenticity?4 Regardless of the answer, it seemed
1 Hi-Lite Records (2015): video statistics. 2 Kenfe (2015): 14.
3 In general, modern trap (a subgenre of hip-hop) is characterised by a sparse beat that is often most
recognisable by double- or triple-time subdivided hi-hats and extremely low bass that often sits in the >100 Hz range. Trap has been of the more popular forms of contemporary hip-hop over the past few years and has spawned numerous hits; ‘Harlem Shake’ by Baauer (2013), ‘Hot N*igga’ by Bobby Schmurda (2014), ‘Trap Queen’ by Fetty Wap (2015), ‘Fuck Up Some Commas’, by Future (2015), ‘Often’ by The Weeknd (2015), ‘Panda’ by Desiigner (2016), ‘Bad and Boujee’ by Migos (2017), ‘Mask Off’ by Future (2017), etc.
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interesting how a single song could raise all these questions, and I felt that its widespread reach was a topic worth exploring.
Furthermore, the dissemination of East-Asian cultural products and practices to U.S. and European markets is a phenomenon that was already observable over the past few decades. During this time, Western markets and consumers developed increasingly more interest in varying forms of East-Asian culture. Japan has been an important international exporter of technology since the 1980’s; Sony’s global distribution of the Walkman was one of the most worldwide influential technological commodities of the period,5 and the brand is still key in the modern field of technology. The rise of Nintendo and the incredible popularity of its most recognisable icons, Mario and Pokémon, or the remarkable success abroad of anime films such as Akira or Ghost in the shell all mark Japan’s significant and influential spread of popular culture through technology and media.6 These cultural outings saw a significant increase in popularity amongst overseas markets during the 1990’s, which was simultaneously a period of economic recession for Japan.7 In 2002, the Japanese government established these particular forms of intangible intellectual as national policy, intended to function as a form of national branding that would lead Japan out of the economic
depression.8 The more traditional emphasis on capital manufacturing was replaced by the
promotion of intellectual property and ‘the creation of information of value’, 9 meant to
increase Japan’s ‘soft power’, or the ability to ‘indirectly influence behaviour or interests through cultural or ideological means’ and focusing on desirability rather than subjugation or coercion.10 Thus, the policy intended to affirm and enhance Japan’s image of ‘cool’ by using elements and imagery from its popular culture, such as anime and manga, which eventually led to the term ‘Cool Japan’ and the establishment of Japan as influential transnational distributor of popular culture.
Since the 1990’s, Hallyu (or also popularly known as the Korean Wave) describes the growing global popularity of Korean popular culture, with K-pop as one of its most well-known spearheads amongst Western audiences. The Korean Wave initially began as a mostly inter-Asian phenomenon, where Korean television dramas saw a significant increase in popularity in China and Southeast Asian nations.11 The term was introduced by the Chinese
5 Iwabuchi (2002): 25-26. 6 Iwabuchi (2002): 30. 7 Valaskivi (2013): 8Daliot-Bul (2009): 248. 9Daliot-Bul (2009): 251. 10 Yano (2009): 683. 11 Kim et al. (2007): 117-118.
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press in the 1990s to describe the popularity of Korean popular culture in China.12 In the late
1990s, a regional music television channel called Channel V broadcasted music videos of Korean popular music, which led to a large K-pop fanbase around Asia.13 Similarly to the ‘Cool Japan’ policy, the South-Korean government initiated a national branding policy that focused on such intellectual property, after a report from Presidential Advisory Board on Science and Technology proposed that Korean economy could strongly benefit from an increased focus on cultural industry. Prior to this report, South-Korea allowed Hollywood films into the nation, and the following influx of American product greatly suppressed Korean culture and industry. The report noted that the revenue generated by a Hollywood movie such as Jurassic Park was equivalent to the sales of 1.5 million Hyundai cars, which demonstrated the potential of cultural industry.14 From the new millennium and onwards, Korean popular culture extended its scope to Western markets through the internet and social media.15 This new Korean Wave was typified by the usage of internet platforms such as YouTube to promote K-pop, a genre characterised by ‘the industrialisation of the star-making process’,16 which saw the international rise of several popular Korean artists, such as boy band H.O.T. and singers Rain or BoA in the early 2000’s, and more contemporary acts like Epik High, PSY, Big Bang and CL.
The spread of East-Asian popular culture has also been an influential phenomenon in inter-Asian cultural studies. However, this movement is only a recent development, as
transnational interaction between Asian scholars has mostly begun since the last two decades. During the 1990s, the theoretical point of reference for most Asian scholars originated from Western-based works that defined international popular music studies, such as Simon Frith, Philip Tagg, Will Straw and Keith Negus.17 However, under the influence of the earlier mentioned transnational phenomena of pop culture, a need of a more contextualised and localised theoretical framework arose; one that could adequately explore the growing inter-Asian popular culture while steering away from Western hegemonic intellectualism.18 This movement also flowed from a growing discourse of inter-Asian cultural studies, fronted by notable authors such as Kuan-Hsing Chen, who has extensively explored topics such as
12 Jang, Won (2012): 196. 13 Shim (2006): 28. 14 Shim (2006): 32. 15 Jang, Won (2012): 198. 16 Shim (2006): 38. 17 Shin (2009): 471. 18 Shin et al. (2013): 2-4.
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Asian (de)imperialisation,19 and the construction of an effective inter-Asian academic
network to displace intellectual Western hegemony;20 Koichi Iwabuchi, who has produced
extensive research on the globalisation of Asian popular culture,21 and Japanese
transnationalism and the complexities surrounding its inter-Asian influence22; or Chua Beng-Huat, who has written on the rapidly expanding Asian economies since the 1970s and popular Asian consumer culture23; they are key examples within a wide academic field of inter-Asian cultural studies that have expanded significantly since the 1990s.
Against this historical and theoretical backdrop, I began to wonder how I could
contribute a Western-based perspective on the contemporary East-Asian popular culture that I was familiar with myself, such as It G Ma and its current exposure to Western audiences. By looking further into this question, I quickly came across 88Rising: a YouTube channel apparently dedicated to the distribution of Asian popular music. What fascinated me most was that, although the bulk of its videos entails music or interviews with artists, this is accompanied by a significant amount of videos with seemingly unrelated subjects such as how to prepare kimchi (a popular Korean dish), the red light district in Thailand, the Japanese animated film Akira from 1988, etc. Due to these videos, I arrived at the question: what is the function of these videos in relation to the music they also distribute, and put into larger context, in what way does 88Rising distribute East-Asian popular culture? What particular image of East-Asian popular culture do they intend to construct, and to whom specifically do they seek to distribute it?
However, I quickly realised that 88Rising alone would not provide an adequate reflection of the variety in platforms that are available to Western audiences. Research regarding this topic would greatly benefit from a wider perspective which would explore more than one platform; for this reason, I began to search for other platforms to include in the analysis. The first one was JaME, a website dedicated to spreading news on Japanese popular music across the world. They feature exclusively written material, as opposed to 88Rising’s focus on video material. Furthermore, a short search on 88Rising reveals they mostly seem to focus on East-Asian contemporary hip-hop and rnb, whereas JaME seems to concentrate on visual kei, a popular rock genre from Japan characterised not so much by its musical
properties, but rather its emphasis on a visual style that draws inspiration from gothic, punk
19 Chen (2010). 20 Chen, Chua (2015): 1-8. 21 Iwabuchi (2010). 22 Iwabuchi (2002). 23 Chua (2002): 1-29.
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and glam rock visuals.24 The last platform I added was HiphopKR, a website dedicated to the
translation of lyrics by Korean rappers and news on contemporary Korean hip-hop. Since this platform focuses on East-Asian hip-hop (like 88Rising), but mostly seems to distribute written material on the matter (like JaME), the combination of these three platforms would provide the research with a broader perspective on the variety of East-Asian distribution to Western audiences.
Although the topic of distribution of East-Asian popular culture seemed viable enough to form a thesis research question around, it still needed further context to help specify what exactly the research would be focusing on; the scale of distribution would have to be established. Although the terms ‘global’ and ‘international’ would quickly come to mind to describe this scale, the term ‘transnational’ would be a more accurate description for several reasons. ‘Global’ is too all-inclusive, and no adequate reflection of the asymmetrical distribution of a phenomenon like East-Asian popular culture, which varies all the way from intra-cultural, to inter-Asian, to international distribution. Furthermore, the complex flows of East-Asian popular culture under the influence of globalisation are better represented by the term transnationalism, because this allows for the inclusion of institutions or agents that are not necessarily limited ‘to the nation-state or to nationally institutionalized organizations’, as stated by Iwabuchi.25 To clarify, this implies that transnational actors can range from
individuals to large organisations, but most importantly, their frame of reference is not their nation of origin, but rather the overlap and dynamic between different nations. In contrast, the term international suggests an outward-looking perspective that originates from its own place or location, and lacks the element of movement that is connected to transnationalism.
Therefore, the term ‘transnationalism’ should be added to the research question to specify the level of distribution each platform utilises, and to denote the transnational cultural flow from East-Asia to Western audiences that would be inspected in this thesis.
Another remark is that the term ‘Western audiences’ will often be used throughout this thesis. The word Western seems unspecified, but is closely connected to the seemingly limitless circulation of media items via the internet. As this thesis will focus on the
distribution of East-Asian popular culture specifically to audiences outside of Asia, it is crucial to emphasise that I do not intend to pose a conservative binary opposition between East-Asia and the West by using the term Western, but rather seek to highlight how the
24 Hashimoto (2007): 87. 25 Iwabuchi (2002): 16.
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transnational spread of cultural material via the internet is hard to demarcate in terms of nationalities.
By incorporating all the aforementioned elements, the research question thus became:
How do transnational internet platforms distribute East-Asian popular culture to Western audiences? In order to effectively answer the main question, each of the three platforms
would have to be regarded with several crucial questions in mind:
(1) First of all, is the popular culture distributed by this platform East-Asian? Although this question seems like it should have an obvious confirming answer, it is essential to
demonstrate that the material presented by the platforms is indeed East-Asian. This will be done by determining their most visibly or noticeably (re)presented artists and establishing where they are from, where they operate from, where their label is located, what their local and inter-Asian relevance is, etc.
(2) Who owns and operates the platform? Where are they from? What is their intention and target audience as stated by themselves?
(3) How is the platform’s material presented?
(4) Finally, a synthesis of the foregoing points will explain what image of East-Asian popular culture each platform provokes by highlighting specific artists and their material. Which artists does it seem to prioritise, and what is the possible motivation behind such
prioritisation? What seem to be the criteria for selecting specific artists? This image can then be compared to their stated intention and target audience to help us understand how each platform distributes East-Asian popular culture to Western audiences. After each platform has been analysed separately, an overall synthesis will shortly provide further comparisons
10 Platform I: 88Rising
The first question that needs to be demonstrated is why the material distributed by 88Rising should be considered as East-Asian. In order to show this, its most prolific artists should be established first. As of May 24th, the fifteen most-watched videos on 88Rising show a clear trend towards three artists: Rich Chigga, Keith Ape, and finally Higher Brothers. First and foremost, it should be mentioned that all three artists are signed to CXSHXNLY, 88Rising’s music label based in Los Angeles. However, all three artists started off
independently in their own respective regions before being recruited to 88Rising; it is this period that will be inspected first to demonstrate where they are from and how they established their music careers.
To begin with, Rich Chigga (stage name for Brian Imanuel) is a rapper who is
88Rising’s most prominent artist. Multiple sources demonstrate that Imanuel (born 1999) was born and raised in Jakarta, Indonesia, and is of Chinese/Indonesian descent, although there is no mention of the reason behind his American-sounding name to be found.26 He garnered attention on the internet through short satirical clips on the popular medium Vine, but rose to sudden fame after he posted a video for his song ‘Dat $tick’ on YouTube in 2015. This particular song was produced by a producer named Ananta Giovanni Pranaya (also known by his stage name Ananta Vinnie), an Indonesian producer; together they independently released the song on the iTunes Store, Apple Music, Spotify and Soundcloud. Although his fluency in English might imply he went to an international school, he was actually home-schooled and mostly taught himself English through videos on the internet.27 However, due to the song being in English and the channels of distribution very much aimed at Western markets, Rich Chigga quickly became an internet phenomenon who was mostly relevant among Western audiences; in one interview, Imanuel recalls how his Indonesian fans often remarked ‘Why is he speaking English?’ beneath the video of ‘Dat $tick’.28 Thanks to his significant popularity overseas, Imanuel also became a local figure of interest who was frequently approached for autographs and photographs.29 The song also drew the attention of 88Rising, who
subsequently signed him to their label CXSHXNLY in 2016.
Although Imanuel is of Chinese/Indonesian descent and initially operated from Jakarta, the use of English in his songs and his prominent affiliation with an American label
26 Herd (2016). 27 Herd (2016). 28 Jenkins (2016). 29 Jenkins (2016).
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make it difficult to determine at first glance to which extent his music can be called East-Asian. However, since he is a native Indonesian, his first independent material was produced in Jakarta, and 88Rising remains very explicit in mentioning his nativity, further analysis of his music on 88Rising should be used to establish how Imanuel is presented on the channel and whether this could be considered a spread of East-Asian popular culture, or rather simply has become an outing of American popular culture that is cleverly branded as ‘Asian culture’ by employing a native Indonesian rapper.
The second artist to be examined is Keith Ape (stage name for Dongheon Lee) who was born in 1993 in Bundang, a large suburban area of Seongnam, South-Korea.30 Lee initially started rapping under the moniker Kid Ash, creating music with local friends and uploading it to Soundcloud, until his output was noted by Cohort crew member Okasian in 2014. The Cohort is a South-Korean hip-hop crew that had already been attracting attention in the Korean underground hip-hop scenes for a few years.31 The group consisted of Korean rappers O$CAR, Reddy (who departed the group in 2016), Okasian, Kangkook, Jay Allday, Coke Jazz, and Bryan Cha$e, and is signed to Hi-Lite Records, a music label based in Seoul and regarded as an influential name in the underground hip-hop scene.32 Their music is nearly
exclusively rapped in Korean, as the mastery of English is quite varyied amongst members, with a few (including Lee) knowing little to no English at all.33 They released several songs
that were met with significant attention on YouTube and Soundcloud, such as ‘Helium’ (2013), ‘Space Ninja’ (2014), ‘Time’ (2014) and the mixtape Orca-Tape (2013). Lee initially collaborated with them on occasional basis. After he was featured on Okasian’s first solo album Boarding Procedures (2012), an album marked by a combination of English and Korean raps, he became a member of The Cohort and regular contributor to their mixtapes. During this time he also changed his stage name to Keith Ape. Early 2015, Keith Ape, Jay Allday and Okasian collaborated with Japanese rappers Kohh and Loota on the previously mentioned hit song ‘It G Ma’. The song was mostly a success in the U.S., where 60% of the total views on YouTube originated.34 The sudden increase in exposure led to Keith Ape’s
30 Kwak (2015).
31 Kwak (2015), ROK HIPHOP (2013). 32 Glasby (2016).
33 Noisey (2015). 34 Kwak (2015).
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signing to 88Rising’s CXSHXNLY in 2015, but since Hi-Lite Records are not connected to his overseas activities, Lee is also still affiliated to them.35
In contrast to Imanuel, Lee raps almost exclusively in Korean, and has only started to incorporate more English into his lyrics since he signed with 88Rising. However, Lee did relocate to the U.S. after his signing and is now aiming to conquer the American hip-hop market,36 which he interestingly enough seemingly plans to do by continuing to include Korean rapping in his songs. Further analysis of Lee’s material on 88Rising has to point out how the company now presents Keith Ape, and how his presence on the platform contributes to the spread of East-Asian culture.
The final artist that will be focused on here are Higher Brothers, a group of four Chinese rappers (MaSiWei, DZ, Psy.P and Melo) who originate from Chengdu, the capital city of the southwestern province Sichuan.37 Their group name is a reference to the international
Chinese air conditioner brand Haier, which they claim symbolised their goal of becoming recognised around the world.38 Prior to Higher Brothers, all four rappers were well-respected members of the Chengdu Rap House, or CDC.39 Additionally, Psy.P and Melo had formed a group of their own called Tiandi Ui; they met MaSiWei and DZ through their affiliation to CDC and decided to pair up. One of their first notable songs was a remix of the prolific hit song ‘Panda’ (2016) by American rapper Desiigner. This remix was characterised by an almost complete absence of English; moreover, Higher Brothers maintained their Chengdu dialect instead of switching to the more standard Mandarin.40 At this point, they were completely independent and not connected to any label, but nevertheless amassed a strong local underground following, typified by the sold-out shows where fans lined up as early as three hours before the doors opened; they also went on a tour that visited most major cities in China.41 On Youku and Tencent Videos, internet platforms that are commonly used in China as alternatives to the now-blocked YouTube, they accumulated in the tens of thousands of views.42 After signing to CXSHXNLY, Higher Brothers expanded their fanbase to include Western audiences, but also increased their Chinese fanbase, with over 42.000 listed fans on
35 Dari (2015). 36 Noisey (2015). 37 JamRed10 (2016). 38 Hypebeast (2017). 39 Yen (2017). 40 Agrawai (2017). 41 Toy (2017). 42 Yen (2017).
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the popular Chinese social media website Weibo. They are currently touring across China and also have a concert planned in Hong-Kong that has already sold-out.
Higher Brothers clearly started off independently within a growing hip-hop community in Sichuan, and also established a considerable local fanbase before joining 88Rising. A further analysis of their material on the platform will therefore be used to determine how 88Rising decided to present that connection to the local Chinese hip-hop scene, and how this influences the way they distribute East-Asian culture.
All in all, it is clear that each of these artists’ roots are in East-Asia – respectively Indonesia, South-Korea and China. It is also clear that they all established local careers before coming into contact with 88Rising, and with the exception of Imanuel, they also all rap in their native tongue. At this point, we can assume that the music by Keith Ape and Higher Brothers can be identified as East-Asian popular culture, because of local relevance, established music careers and contributions to their local hip-hop scenes. This observation is more difficult to make for Rich Chigga, mostly because he raps in English and had a less established career before connecting with 88Rising; nonetheless, because of the way 88Rising strongly presents him as ‘Asian culture’ by including him in the larger context of artists such as Keith Ape and Higher Brothers, it is still important to take a closer look at his videos and fully determine whether Imanuel propagates elements of East-Asian culture. However, before we can further explore the videos by these artists, we must first learn more about 88Rising itself.
Overview of 88Rising
88Rising is a media company founded by Sean Miyashiro and presently based in Brooklyn, New York. The company establishes itself mostly through its YouTube channel, simply called ‘88rising’, which is currently its spearhead and most visible media outlet, but the company also operates an Instagram account and owns its own dedicated website, although the latter in its current form is barely anything but a digital portal to the YouTube channel. Its name is a reference to the shape of the Chinese characters 囍, which also translates to ‘double happiness’, a phrase that is used by the company as a sort of subtitle or catchphrase (‘88 is double happiness’). In Miyashiro’s own words, 88Rising is an effort to become a ‘definitive media brand that represents and celebrates Asian culture, especially for millennials and young people.’43 Its intention as stated by Miyashiro is not only to represent
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Asian culture on a large, globalized scale, but also to actively accommodate the communication of Asian culture to audiences outside of Asia.
Miyashiro is of Japanese/Korean descent, but grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S.44 He travelled to Austin in Texas to start a company called Recreation, which managed electronic music artists; Austin is the host for the SXSW Festival and Conferences that is held every year and therefore attracts many music artists. Through this, he launched a platform for electronic music in collaboration with Vice called ‘Thump’: a website dedicated to reporting news on electronic music. Vice itself was originally founded in 1994 as a print magazine that covered various culture and news topics. Since then, the magazine has expanded and is now Vice Media, encompassing a magazine, website, film production company and a record label. The website and magazine cover a wide selection of topics such as politics, news, cinema, art, music, photography, fashion, sports, and more. The website is divided into a main page with channels that cover all these respective topics, and Thump became one of those channels, focusing on electronic music and clubbing culture. Although Miyashiro enjoyed working for the coverage on electronic music, he stated that his real passion would be to create a similar channel for Asian culture, which is why he created 88Rising midway 2016.
Intention and target audience
An important remark should be made regarding the specific Asian countries that 88Rising intends to represent. Their own dedicated homepage, www.88rising.com (minimal as it may be in its functioning), features a row of national flags at the top; although such flags are a common sight among website interfaces, they usually link to different versions of the site that correspond with the selected nationality. The nations that are displayed are (in order of appearance) Japan, Taiwan, China, South Korea, Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam,
Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Laos, Burma, Singapore and Cambodia.45 These flags are not selectable and do not provide the user with a different version. Thus, we are left with the question of why they have been included and what exactly they represent. Clearly, 88Rising does not seek to represent the entirety of the Asian continent (as is shown by the large amount of Asian nations that are excluded from the list of flags), but excludes itself to East- and South-East Asia. Moreover, the first four countries are actually most relevant to
44 Chow (2017). 45 88Rising (2017).
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88Rising, as the vast majority of its videos feature either Japanese, Taiwanese, Chinese or Korean artists or cultural products/practices. By presenting this selection of flags on their website, 88Rising establishes their interpretation of “Asia” and what they refer to when they state their wish to represent and celebrate “Asian” culture. Therefore, the flags in itself are an explicit yet quite subtle statement (mostly because the flags are quite small, and many
viewers outside of Asia will have to look up certain flags to know which nation they represent).
Furthermore, 88Rising’s stated intention is ‘to become the definitive media brand’ for Asian culture aimed at millennials and young people.46 Miyashiro has claimed that 88Rising intends to represent and celebrate Asian culture. However, this is only a very general and too ambiguous description of what 88Rising seeks to achieve. By going through numerous interviews with Miyashiro, two specific points can by synthesised that better describe their aim.
First, 88Rising mostly seeks to represent a specific selection of East-Asian hip-hop and rnb artists. This is clearly demonstrated by the interviews with CNN,47 Pitchfork,48 The Hundreds49, and Forbes,50 wherein a specific set of East-Asian artists continuously reappears: Rich Chigga, Keith Ape and Higher Brothers. At this moment in time, these artists are clearly the focal point of 88Rising’s media output. Although the platform offers a large variety of videos on their channel (as will be demonstrated in greater detail later on), they are clearly a commercial company that first and foremost seeks to represent and promote its artists and to establish its brand identity as well as possible.
Second, it is not only their aim to simply represent these artists and their work, but also to facilitate interactions with American artists to create syntheses between East-Asian and American popular culture, as evidenced for example by the remix of ‘It G Ma’ with A$AP Ferg, Father, Waka Flocka Flame, and Asian-American rapper Dumbfoundead. By doing so, 88Rising intends for ‘Western artists to collaborate or experience Asian things, and vice versa.’51 Again, by facilitating collaborations between the East-Asian artists they
represent and American artists that already have a more established reputation amongst Western audiences, they clearly intend to maximise the exposure of their own signed artists.
46 Setaro (2016). 47 Liu (2017). 48 Chow (2017). 49 Kenfe (2015). 50 Setaro (2016). 51 Chow (2017).
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In order to establish 88Rising’s target audience, let us look at their preferred
promotional methods in addition to what they themselves claim their audience to be. On one hand, they want to ‘speak to the taste’ of Asian millennials in- and outside of Asia as stated by Miyashiro. However, and more importantly, the artists themselves have been explicit about how their affiliation to 88Rising has brought them significantly more exposure amongst both Western audiences and artists; MaSiWei from Higher Brothers stated how ‘88Rising has been helpful in getting our music outside of Asia’, and that since joining them, their number of international fans has gone up52; Keith Ape has collaborated with American rappers Playboi Carti, Denzel Curry and producer Southside through the network of 88Rising; Rich Chigga was brought in touch with prolific American rapper Ghostface Killah from the Wu-Tang Clan, and a selection of contemporary popular American rappers were asked to react to one of his videos (a video which will be analysed more in-depth further on).
Clearly, the notion of combining selected East-Asian artists with American artists whom are established and popular amongst Western audiences is a crucial promotional method to 88Rising. The fact that they choose contemporary popular American artists to achieve this also implies that they emphasise distribution to Western audiences; it implies a notion of cultural proximity that we will return to later during the overall synthesis and discussion. Additionally, it is important to acknowledge that through this promotional method, 88Rising clearly does not distribute exclusively East-Asian popular culture, but incorporates elements of American popular culture. Therefore, further analysis has to show how its most prominent artists contribute to a distribution of East-Asian popular culture, but also to what extent this is influenced by American popular culture.
Through the exploration of 88Rising’s intention and target audience, we now have two issues that need to be addressed through an analysis of a selection of their videos: (1) The ethnicity of the earlier mentioned three prominent artists on its own is not enough to
subsequently claim their material on 88Rising is East-Asian culture. Further analysis of their output on the platform should be used to demonstrate how they contribute to 88Rising’s distribution of East-Asian popular culture, and to what extent this is influenced by the platform’s elements of American popular culture. (2) Furthermore, what seem to be 88Rising’s criteria for selecting specific East-Asian artists, and why have they chosen
specifically these three East-Asian artists to mainly represent their platform? However, before
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we dive deeper into the video material itself, let us take a step back and first establish how the content on 88Rising is organised in a categorical overview.
Categorical content
As of May 24th 2017, YouTube channel 88Rising has uploaded 197 videos. Although the most high-profile artists (Rich Chigga, Higher Brothers and Keith Ape) in these videos are signees of CXSHXNLY, many of the other artists or channels that are featured, such as Jay Park, Joji, Yung Bae, Peaceful Cuisine, Yaeji, DEAN, Filthy Frank and more, are independent or signed to other labels. The collection can be split up into several categories (listing the amount of videos after the name):
original music: 60 (actual video: 46, audio only: 14) cover music: 14 music mixes: 3 live music: 31 cuisine: 27 promotional: 5 interviews: 12 choreographies: 8 artistic: 17 cultural: 20
Most of these categories are not explicitly mentioned by the channel and are only one interpretation among many possibilities, or an attempt to somewhat organise 88rising’s videos into a structure that can be analysed. Cover music, choreographies and most of the interviews are always mentioned as such in the title; cuisine videos are divided into three playlists: ‘Seoulfood’ (4 videos), ‘Eighty ATE’ (19 videos) and ‘Japan’s Greatest Bartender’ (4 videos). A few remarks should be made to clarify the other categories:
(1) the live music category includes a number of videos from a series named 88
GOOD FORTUNES. Videos in this series feature a single artist who performs one
or two of their tracks and/or a freestyle over another track, plus an interview on a wide range of topics. Therefore, these videos are hard to categorise as one specific category, but due to the emphasis on the ‘liveness’ in the videos, they are also categorised as such.
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(2) Videos in the artistic category prioritise a more artistic or aesthetic message over a musical or informational one. Most of these videos are created by Frank Yang, a Taiwanese American video artist who explores notions of the contemporary bodily aesthetic. The earlier mentioned emphasis on the aesthetic quality of videos by 88Rising is elevated to actual subject in Yang’s videos, wherein the aesthetic of the human body is artistically explored. Moreover, Yang’s videos not only feature the bodily aesthetic as main topic, but are also heavily edited and stylized to once again emphasise the focus on aesthetic quality that accompanies many videos on 88Rising.
(3) The cultural category might seem problematic or unspecified at first glance, but videos in this category specifically aim to represent elements of culture that are otherwise not included in the list. The name “other East-Asian cultural
phenomena” might therefore be more appropriate, but for the sake of convenience is now only used once for clarification. It includes videos on a broad array of subjects, such as the red light district in Thailand, an exploration of Japanese fashion brand Bape, the appalling working conditions of Korean factory workers during the 80’s and 90’s, the Japanese animated film Akira from 1988, etc. First of all, the general categorical overview confirms that 88Rising specifically aims to emphasise hip-hop and rnb: specifically, from the videos listed above, 133 out of 197 have hip-hop or rnb as subject, either directly or by reference in the form of interviews or short informational clips.
However, from a categorical perspective, it is also interesting to note that there is a noticeable and significant amount of videos in ‘other’ categories – cuisine, artistic and cultural, combining for a total of 57 videos, or roughly 30% of the total amount of videos on 88Rising. The large amount of such videos implies that 88Rising does put effort in
distributing other parts of East-Asian popular culture (besides the promotion of their own artists); videos in these categories entail Japanese anime and Korean cinema, social circumstances of Korean factory workers in the 80’s and 90’s, a short documentary on red light district in Thailand, demonstrations on how to prepare kimchi, sashimi, Korean seafood, etc. – all in all, a broad introduction to selected topics from East-Asian culture. Then again, the amount of views for these videos ranges from 30.000 to 300.000, which is considerably less than videos by more prolific artists, whose videos comfortably reach several million views. Since the priority lies with the videos by these artists, let us first take a closer look at their most prolific videos.
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Analyses:
1. ‘Who That Be’
As of June 22nd, the most-watched video on 88rising is ‘Who That Be’ by Rich Chigga (real name Brian Imanuel), produced by 88Rising.53 It was posted on November 29, 2016, and has garnered over 13 million views over that period. The video is characterised by three distinct elements: the lack of cultural signifiers, the simplistic musical style, and a humoristic/satirical atmosphere.
For a platform that in their own words represents and celebrates Asian culture, there are remarkably few cultural signifiers in its most-watched video. The video commences with shots of a suburban neighbourhood, and although there is no explicit mention of it, this neighbourhood feels exceptionally American. The particular architecture of the houses, the wide street with a stop sign at the end – all point towards an upper-class suburban
neighbourhood in the USA. The other depicted sceneries are a forest with asphalt road, a vintage-looking couch with similar looking lamp, a battleship of unidentifiable nationality, and finally the skyline and city roads of an unknown city. It is only with extreme scrutiny that one can distinguish the words ‘VenusFort’ in neon letters in the backdrop of this skyline, revealing that the featured city is actually Tokyo (Odaiba VenusFort is a shopping mall situated in Tokyo). However, the name is only visible for a very short time and appears blurry in the background. All in all, there are barely any references to East-Asian culture, and from a visual standpoint, the video simply appears as an American popular music video.
The simplistic musical style is another thing that stands out. The track is a hip-hop song with a very sparse beat, made up by only a low synth, a high-hat, kick drum, snare drum, a chime, and an occasional backing vocal. The synth repeats a simplistic five-note pattern spanning two bars and is extended with a sixth note every four bars. The chorus features a low rumbling bass and an extra percussive synth that resembles one of the sounds from an 808 drum machine, a sonic characteristic that is also very common in contemporary American trap hip-hop. These elements mostly make up the entire song, but the beat’s simplistic character is in direct contrast with Imanuel’s rapping. He often changes rhythmic emphases and overall rhythmical structure of his sentences, alternating between a fast-paced, jolted style and a slower, more repetitive one. His rhyming schemes are simple but effective, most often simply using the last word of each sentence. However, most importantly, all these
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musical elements together form a song that is basically inter-exchangeable with most contemporary American trap songs.
The simplicity of the instrumental coupled with his delivery as a rapper are important elements to the satirical quality of the video. After the initial opening shots of the suburb, Imanuel is depicted sitting on a couch while softly petting a small lapdog. His young
appearance and somewhat awkward facial expressions and dance moves contribute to a nerdy or goofy image when combined with the aforementioned visual elements. This image is in stark contrast with Imanuel’s lyrics; for example, his opening line is ‘Yo bitch on me but you can never do nothing / Cuz yo momma raised a pussy.’ However, an important reason for the success of this satire and supposedly also the song itself is Imanuel’s skill as a rapper. If his rapping would have been poorly executed, the satirical effect would have been greatly
reduced, since he would have simply affirmed the contrasting image created in the video. His skill as a rapper offsets the audience’s expectation that is based on his image, which
successfully establishes the satirical element of the video.
One might regard the satirical nature of ‘Who That Be’ as originating from an East-Asian source because of Imanuel’s presence as Indonesian artist. From this perspective, the satire could be a satirical take on American contemporary hip-hop. However, as established earlier, there are no East-Asian cultural indicators throughout the video, and Imanuel raps in English. Although necessary for the satire to function optimally, the simplistic beat that strongly follows the trend of contemporary American trap music is more likely to be perceived as part of the contemporary hip-hop scene, instead of externally confronting it through satire. Through all these observations, we have to conclude that ‘Who That Be’ cannot be considered part of East-Asian culture, but is rather an outing of contemporary American popular hip-hop, produced by an American company. Although it is performed by a native Chinese/Indonesian, his ethnicity is positioned by 88Rising to gain cultural
distinction that promotes the material to Western markets.
This conclusion is supported by the second most-watched video on 88rising, ‘Rappers react to Rich Chigga’.54 It was published on the 12th of July, 2016 and produced by 88Rising.
The full title explicitly names a few of the American rappers that are invited to watch another video by Rich Chigga, ‘Dat $tick’, published on February 22, 2016. The concept of the video is commonly found on YouTube, where a certain group of people (either unknown people, celebrities, artists, YouTubers, etc.) are asked to watch a selected video and respond on
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camera. The particular video in this case, ‘Dat $tick’ by Rich Chigga, was the breakout video for the artist, as described earlier. It features a similar satirical presentation such as described in the analysis of ‘Who That Be’, but here, Imanuel’s nerdy image is far more heavily emphasised, as he is outfitted with a pink, buttoned-up polo and a Reebok fanny pack.
Even before viewing the video, the particular respondents are the first element of interest. As already mentioned in the title, they are contemporary American rappers:
Ghostface Killah (a fundamental figure within American hip-hop and member of the famous formation The Wu-tang Clan), Desiigner (who released the incredibly popular track ‘Panda’ in 2016), Goldlink, Jazz Cartier, Tory Lanez, Flatbush Zombies, 21Savage, Cam’ron and MadeinTYO. All of these rappers are currently popular American hip-hop artists, with the exception of Ghostface Killah and Cam’ron, who have a longer established career and are both widely respected artists within the hip-hop field. During the video, we see how each rapper is surprised by Rich Chigga’s rapping ability that contrasts so starkly with his image – this particular element of skill vs. appearance is of particular interest to all of them.
The essential point to this video is that by validating Rich Chigga’s artistry through the positive opinion of more established American rappers, 88Rising attempts to promote Rich Chigga to the Western audiences that are already familiar with the American rappers in the video. Additionally, and more implicitly, by positioning Rich Chigga as a ‘foreign’ rapper against a selection of American rappers, 88Rising tries to posit him as part of the Other, while in fact (as established earlier) he cannot be regarded as representative of East-Asian culture in his current context.
Although this thesis seeks to demonstrate how 88Rising does distribute East-Asian popular culture, it was essential to also explore their most visible artist and his relation to this distribution. For now, it is clear we have to conclude that 88Rising does not distribute East-Asian popular culture through the presentation of Rich Chigga. However, I would also like to demonstrate how their two other most prolific artists, Keith Ape and Higher Brothers, do contribute to the distribution of East-Asian culture, by moving on to a few of their most-watched videos. Together, Keith Ape and Higher Brothers represent half of the videos featured in the most-watched section, with a significant portion of their videos listing
between 1 and 2.5 million views – Keith Ape is featured on 6 of the 20 most-watched videos, Higher Brothers on 4 of 20.
22 2. ‘WeChat’
The first video that is of interest to this thesis is actually a collaboration between Higher Brothers and Keith Ape called ‘WeChat’.55 The title is a reference to the highly
popular Chinese social media application of the same name, used for instant messaging. It is the opening track of Higher Brothers’ 2017 album Black Cab, and was produced by
MaSiWei, one of the Higher Brothers members. The video on 88Rising has garnered over 2.2 million views.
In contrast to Rich Chigga’s song, the track is completely rapped in Chinese by Higher Brothers with one Korean verse at the end by Keith Ape, but the video also does not include subtitles. Only the very start features English, with MaSiWei explaining in sparse English how ‘there’s no Skype, no Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram, we use WeChat!’ The video is edited in such a way to make it look as if we are watching it on the screen of a mobile phone. It comprises of film fragments showing Higher Brothers rapping along to the song in their studio, but edited to appear as if the viewer is watching them on WeChat. Near the end of the track, a notification pops up, saying how ‘Keith Ape is inviting you to a video call’; he then appears in a low-resolution video that is occasionally interrupted by a loading screen, and can be seen rapping along with Seoul’s Lotte World Tower in the background, showing that he is calling them all the way from South-Korea. All these elements propagate the image of the entire video transpiring on WeChat. The social messaging app itself could even be considered as an element of East-Asian popular culture; it currently has over 272 million active users, and more than a third of all time spent on mobile internet by Chinese mainlanders is on WeChat.56
In addition to the fragments, we are also presented with conversations through text messages that similarly appear as if they are WeChat messages. These messages are in English, and are sent by a large variety of people; some relevant to 88Rising (such as sean88, who is assumedly meant to be Sean Miyashiro, and Keith Ape; a few American rappers such as Migos, Famous Dex, supposedly exclaiming their love for Higher Brothers; and finally characters who are not identifiable but are presented as fans of Higher Brothers or Keith Ape, with one particular female fan named Grace who insists on their attention by sending
suggestive photographs, and one conversation request from a contact simply named ‘Whack label’ that is promptly rejected. This all transpires in English, and therefore provides the
55 88Rising (2017). 56 The Economist (2016).
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otherwise completely Chinese/Korean song with an English narrative that is also suitable for a transnational and Western audience.
Although clearly inspired by American trap, MaSiWei created a beat that does set them apart. The song is a more laid-back variation on trap hip-hop, maintaining the characteristic rapping rhythms that are driven by triplets and syncopation (such as
demonstrated at several moments during the song at the 0:43 to 0:56, 1:03 to 1:16, or 2:08 to 2:28 marks), but at the same time sounds different from customary American trap due to extra emphasis on ‘sweeter’ sounds, such as the repeating high chimes combined with the violin chords. Furthermore, by combining a video suitable for a transnational audience, WeChat as prominent East-Asian visual cultural element, and a collaboration between two established East-Asian rappers, ‘WeChat’ is a clear example of how 88Rising distributes East-Asian popular culture to a Western audience.
3. ‘Diamonds’
One particular video – ‘Diamonds’ by Keith Ape – is also interesting to this analysis, as it is Keith Ape’s most-watched video on 88Rising with nearly 3 million views.57 The song was
produced by Jedi P, an American producer who was rather unknown before this track; a search for his name leads to a Soundcloud account where he posts his beats for a little over 5000 followers, plus a few self-released tracks on YouTube. Since the producer is American, musically seen this song is an example of the way 88Rising facilitates collaborations between East-Asian and American artists. However, in contrast to what was observed in the Rich Chigga video, ‘Diamonds’ maintains certain East-Asian cultural elements, while also incorporating elements from American popular culture, as will be demonstrated in the analysis.
An immediate detail that grabs the attention is that the video opens with ‘Converse x Keith Ape present’. Converse is an American shoe company that is well-known for their production of Chuck Taylor All Stars, a shoe that has become a recognisable icon in
streetwear fashion. Keith Ape wears a pair of striking white All Stars in the video, which are from a new line of streetwear called ‘counterclimate’ by Converse. The interests for Converse are obvious, as Keith Ape wearing them in the video is a clear form of commercial
endorsement. However, Keith is also wearing a camo raincoat by Bape, an iconic Japanese streetwear brand. Bape, also known as A Bathing Ape, is a fashion brand founded by Nigo in
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1993, a Japanese fashion designer. It originated in the Harajuku area in Tokyo and was of the first Japanese streetwear brands. By wearing the coat in the video, Keith Ape also maintains his own East-Asian fashion style, even though he is simultaneously endorsing the Converse shoes.
During the video, the viewer follows Keith Ape in a night out through a series of dazzling, psychedelic visual effects. At 2:39, Keith even puts on glasses that momentarily turn his surroundings into an anime-style animated world; the neon street signs around him are mostly Korean, he walks through a shop with a fishmonger preparing fish and squid; although the specific city cannot be distinguished, the signs are clearly intended to imply the atmosphere of an Asian city. By combining the commercial aspect of Converse with this atmosphere and the fact he raps about half of his lyrics in Korean, Keith Ape seems to maintain a certain autonomy instead of completely surrendering to an American commercial image to promote Converse or American popular culture. However, the video was produced by BRTHR, a duo consisting of the American Kyle Wightman and Japanese/American Alex Lee. Lee grew up in Tokyo, but moved to New York to attend film school, where he also met Wightman.58 Together they created BRTHR as a Brooklyn-based production duo, and have since produced music videos for popular American pop artists such as Charlie XCX, Jessie Ware, Miley Cyrus and The Weeknd. As their work clearly belongs to the scene of
contemporary American popular culture, it is important to establish that any atmosphere of an Asian city in the ‘Diamonds’ video was created by an American film production duo, and is therefore no representation of East-Asian popular culture.
All in all, the elements of East-Asian popular culture that are distributed through this video are quite limited – in fact, only Keith Ape himself as South-Korean rapper with Korean lyrics and the presence of fashion brand Bape could be considered as such. In contrast to this, the ‘Asian atmosphere’ of the grimy city around him, combined with the neon lights and psychedelic visual effects, seem to have been applied mostly to create the image of a dystopian Oriental city à la Blade Runner.59 From this perspective, the implied visual Asian
elements are used stereotypically to affirm that image. Thus, although certain quite specific elements of East-Asian popular culture (Keith’s established Korean artistry, the Bape coat) are distributed through the video, they are accompanied by visuals that imply to be East-Asian cultural signifiers, but are in fact American creations. Altogether, we can therefore
58 Luk (2016). 59 Yu (2008): 54.
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conclude that the video does show some specific outings of East-Asian popular cultural, but together with the larger context of the video, are used to create an exotic sense of cultural autonomy for Keith Ape to maximise his cultural capital in the eyes of Western audiences.
4. ‘Made In China’
A final intriguing video is by Higher Brothers, called ‘Made In China’.60 One aspect that stands out immediately while viewing the video is that it is subtitled in English and Chinese. This provides transnational audiences with a way to follow and understand the lyrics, in contrast to the other videos by Higher Brothers that do not have this feature – which might be one explanation as to why ‘Made In China’ is currently their most popular video. The lyrics themselves are an obvious reference to China’s export of products with the iconic disclamatory line on country of origin – ‘made in China’. The first half of the hook (the only part of the song that is in English, besides Famous Dex’s verse) is a direct reference to this:
‘My chains, new gold watch, made in China We play ping pong ball, made in China Buy designer shit for my bitch, made in China Yeah Higher Brothers' Black Cab, made in China’
The last line quoted above is a reference to how their most recent album, Black Cab, is apparently produced in China. The first verse by MaSiWei mostly continues the theme of Chinese cultural and industrial export, incorporating a long list of products, from
toothbrushes to umbrellas to hot sauce, and even referencing how Mandarin is now being taught at American schools. The other verses by DZ, Melo and Psy.P also equate the export power to Higher Brothers’ success in China’s rap industry so far and their intention to conquer the international hip-hop scene similarly to the capital dominance of Chinese products. Psy.P also mentions Chinese traditional poet Li Bai in his verse, stating how the greatness of his own lyrics must mean he ‘was Li Bai in a past life’. With all these lyrical references, Higher Brothers present themselves not only as a Chinese product, but one that is consciously looking to take over the world.
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Higher Brother’s intention to represent Chinese culture is also emphasised by the abundance of cultural signifiers throughout the video, which was shot in Chengdu, China.61
First of all, they are all wearing tracksuits from the 2012 Chinese Olympic team.
Furthermore, the first shown location is a presumably Chinese interior, with objects such as fans, a mahjong board, a large standing screen with Chinese characters, Chinese porcelain and red lanterns; another location is a narrow alley decorated with paper lanterns, also with Chinese characters; a third location is in front of a large temple-like Chinese building with red neon lights; all these objects and locations seem to enunciate Chinese culture.
Additionally, the featured guest artist American rapper Famous Dex does not appear in the video – instead, the viewer gets a screen that simply states ‘Dexter couldn’t make it to China’, followed by ‘This video is not available in your country’, which is probably a reference to China’s strict media policy that censors a lot of media items and services from outside of China, and is here implied to have censored Famous Dex’s contribution to the video. Another perspective on this moment is that it is actually the Western audience missing out on a part which is only accessible in China or certain parts of Asia; both perspectives work, and are mostly dependent on the location of the viewer, which is a further testament to how the video is aimed at transnational audiences.
All in all, ‘Made In China’ is a song that has both lyrics and a video that significantly reference Chinese culture. Together with the targeted transnational audience, Higher
Brothers’ local relevance (as demonstrated by their upcoming live tour around China and an appearance at Hong Kong’s Clockenflap festival), we can conclude that the track is a clear example of East-Asian popular culture on 88Rising that is available to Western audiences.
Synthesis
Now that videos by all three prominent artists on 88Rising have been discussed, there are several important points to be distilled from the analysis. These points will also
specifically aim to answer questions regarding why they prioritise these specific artists, and the image of East-Asian popular culture that 88Rising creates by highlighting them.
Each of the three prominent artists represents East-Asian culture to a different extent. The first artist we discussed was Rich Chigga. As established in the analysis of his song ‘Who That Be’, his music and video is interchangeable with contemporary American trap, also since he chooses to convey himself completely in English. The video or his lyrics do not
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show any signs of East-Asian popular culture. 88Rising presents him as a somewhat exotic rapper by also producing a video wherein American rappers react to his breakout hit ‘Dat $tick’, which positions him as an Asian rapper against more established American rappers; however, this is only an attempt to provide him cultural capital on the Western market.
The next artist, Keith Ape, shows varying degrees of representing East-Asian culture. As demonstrated, he is mostly presented in a synthesis between American and East-Asian popular culture, as he mixes his own Korean rap style and East-Asian fashion with American collaborations for his video and beat in ‘Diamonds’. Although the video in its completeness is therefore no example of East-Asian popular culture, it does propagate specific East-Asian elements, and could also function as an introduction to other videos by The Cohort (Keith’s South-Korean rap crew), some of which are also on 88Rising. His feature on Higher
Brothers’ ‘WeChat’ establishes him more clear as South-Korean rapper for Western audiences, as he raps exclusively in Korean on this track and is shown in front of one of Seoul’s landmarks, Lotte World Tower.
Finally, Higher Brothers were discussed, who are the clearest example of how 88Rising distributes East-Asian popular culture. Their songs ‘WeChat’ and ‘Made In China’ are both characterised by an almost complete lack of English lyrics; instead, the former uses a simple narrative with English text in the video, while the latter uses subtitles, which makes both videos suitable for transnational audiences. These videos bring Chinese popular (as demonstrated by their extensive live tour around China and Hong-Kong) hip-hop to Western audiences.
An element that has not been readdressed are the videos from the ‘other’ category, as described earlier in the paragraph on 88Rising’s Categorical structure. Some of these videos are very clear demonstrations of East-Asian popular culture, such as the introductions to the Japanese anime films Paprika or Akira, instructions on how to prepare kimchi, Korean seafood or sashimi, etc. Since the videos by prominent artists are more representative of 88Rising’s material, they more chosen to analyse over the ‘other’ videos; however, the videos by these prominent artists can also function as gateway to these videos, which is another way in which 88Rising distributes elements of East-Asian popular culture.
All in all, the primary motivation behind 88Rising’s emphasis on these three artists seems to be their most noticeable shared element: they all produce variations of trap hip-hop. Since this is currently a popular genre of hip-hop amongst Western audiences (as
demonstrated by the large amount of contemporary American rappers that use the genre, including highly prolific names such as Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar, Drake, Jay-Z, etc.) it
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is commercially seen most viable to select East-Asian artists that also partake in this musical trend.
In addition to being part of the contemporary trap trend, 88Rising seems to maintain a combination of artists that are relevant in their region of origin and artists that are simply marketable as part of Asian culture, as demonstrated for example with Rich Chigga. Through these criteria, they end up with a mix of Western or American musical outings performed by East-Asian artists on one hand, and a representation of East-Asian contemporary hip-hop that is occasionally (but not always) combined with elements of American popular culture on the other. Altogether, it cannot be claimed that all the material on 88Rising is a distribution of East-Asian popular culture, as was clearly demonstrated by the analyses. On the other hand, it has been established that, in various cases, they certainly distribute East-Asian popular
culture, be it to different extents – sometimes by only presenting specific elements, sometimes through a video in its entirety.
29 Platform II: JaME / KoME
Before we explore the platforms JaME and KoME any further, we must first again establish that the popular culture they distribute is East-Asian. For both platforms, it is important to note that they do not create popular culture themselves in the same sense as for example 88Rising; rather, they mostly distribute news articles regarding respectively
Japanese and Korean popular artists. Since they both platforms almost exclusively focus on popular culture that is produced in either Japan or Korea, it is not as complex as with 88Rising to establish that they distribute material on East-Asian popular culture. The essential difference is that both JaME and KoME explicitly state the material they target to cover to be respectively be Japanese and Korean, whereas 88Rising was far more ambiguous in their claim of representing and celebrating Asian culture in general.
Another argument supporting the observation that JaME and KoME target East-Asian popular culture is that there is no immediately noticeable prominent artist that represents their platforms. This indicates that both platforms actually intend to cover a broad variety of popular acts from Japan/Korea, in order to give their audience a clear overview of the contemporary relevant popular scene in both countries. Additionally, the fact that there is such a long list of artists featured on both websites makes it unrealistic to investigate each artist in terms of local relevance and biographical details. Since both websites are
exceptionally explicit in stating their intention and target material (as will be explored more in-depth later on), this thesis will take these explications as valid starting point for further analysis on the way they put this intention into practice – or, the way they thus distribute East-Asian popular culture and to which audiences.
JaME overview
The website JaME World is an online platform for news on Japanese popular music. JaME originated from www.JrockFrance.com, a website aimed at providing information on visual kei music. Since visual kei still remains an important subject to JaME, it also needs a brief overview to better understand the content on the platform. Visual kei is a Japanese movement in popular Japanese rock music that is not so much characterized by specific musical elements, but rather by a strong emphasis on visual expression. Artists often wear elaborate costumes and/or makeup that often create a cross-gender image, while the design of their clothing is somewhat reminiscent of the visual style found in gothic, punk and glam
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rock images.62 An important facet to this cross-dressing is that it largely aims to attract
attention from the mostly female fans, who often imitate or recreate outfits of their favourite band members. These fans also maintain strict social codes that govern in which section a fan is allowed to stand during the performance, what dance moves are executed at which specific time, etc. Interaction between members is an element that is highly appreciated by audience members, for example by engaging in acts of ‘fan service’, where they exchange hugs or even kisses. The imitation by female fans, the strong devotion to gain recognition from their favourite band members during live performances, and the ‘fan services’ by band members link visual kei to the ‘somewhat fetishistic otaku culture.’63 Otaku is a term used to describe intense fans of Japanese popular culture, who dedicate ‘substantial amounts of personal resources into consuming and (re)creating Japanese popular culture.’64 This fascination sometimes extends to forms of fetishism, and in the case of Japanese female otaku, this is reflected by the popularity of the genre yaoi, love stories about homosexual boys; the earlier mentioned ‘fan service’ by band members is an example of such a link between visual kei and otaku.65 Due to the intricate relationships that fans construct between themselves and artists, visual kei can be regarded more as a cultural complex than simply a musical subgenre; all in all, the crucial importance of social constructions and practices within visual kei
fandom are important to better our understanding of articles regarding visual kei on JaME. In 2001, the website www.JrockFrance.com merged with www.JpopFrance.com. Thanks to the popularity of the merged product, a joint product was initiated that included voluntary participants from France, Italy, Poland and Germany. An expanded association of this project, named Japanese Music Entertainment (or JaME) was founded in 2004. Since then, it focused on connecting Japanese contemporary artists and music to European audiences and promoters/distributors. In 2005, this targeted area was expanded to also include America.
Content on the JaME website is exclusively written material. The majority of articles on the website focus on news regarding past or upcoming gigs of Japanese popular artists around the world. The menu at the top of the homepage offers several categories that the user can select, with one option under the home category named “video” linking to the YouTube page of JaME. However, only 55 videos have been uploaded to the channel over the course of
62 Hashimoto (2007): 87. 63 McCleod (2013): 310. 64 Hashimoto (2007): 87. 65 McCleod (2013): 314.
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over six years, with the first video dating back to January 6th, 2011 and the last to April 26th,
2017. Its most-watched video, a promotional clip for X JAPAN featuring a recording of a live performance by the band, has been watched over 1.3 million times. All other videos are either interviews (10 clips) or short video messages by artists (44 clips). The second and third most-watched videos have gathered around 53.000 views; the next six ranging from 22.000 down to 11.000; the remaining 46 videos do not cross the 10.000 views mark, of which a majority does not reach 3000. These viewing numbers, combined with the low amount of uploads over a long period, confirm that JaME prioritises written material, which they claim receives 15.000 visitors on a daily basis.
KoME introduction
Like JaME, KoME World is an international platform that is focused on the distribution of news regarding contemporary East-Asian popular music, but specialises in Korean popular music as opposed to JaME. It was established in 2007 by members from the JaME team. A surging interest in Korean popular music at the time led to the decision that a similar website as JaME, but then for Korean music, would be used for global news
promotion. Initially, the platform was divided into two separate URL’s, respectively www.kmusiceuropa.com and www.kmusicamerica.com. In 2008, these two websites were merged into a single one, www.kome-world.com.
The content on KoME is also strictly written material. Most articles on the platform focus on upcoming tours or gigs, album releases, or interviews with Korean artists. The menu at the top of the homepage is identical to the JaME version, but features different
contemporary themes, and the subcategory ‘CD Japan’ on JaME is substituted for ‘YES Asia’ on KoME. Both these links function as gateways to web shops selling respectively Japanese or Korean music, books, films, etc. Although the KoME homepage also displays a ‘Video’ link, it appears to be broken – contrary to JaME, KoME is not findable on YouTube.
Both JaME and KoME are run by volunteers. This is an important observation, since it emphasises the non-profit mentality that characterises the websites; even the ‘about’ section of both websites stresses how important the notion of passionate volunteers is to the
understanding of their methods and objectives. JaME is particularly explicit regarding the constitution of their team, stating:
