Chris A Tuesday Resp

Listening first to rapper Jin's track "Chinese Beats" and reading the skit's lyrics/conversation, I immediately picked up on Jin's use of sly humor but also, his maintenance of a distinct seriousness essential to hip-hop songs and the quintessential rapper image. Since Jin is Chinese, the opposing character in the skit who proposes multiple beats proposes all which aim to express Asian identity through the music and instrumentation. While hearing the beats the [guy] is dropping for Jin, Jin maintains his sanity and his patience in hearing these ignorant representations of 'Orientalized' music. After multiple beats resounding repetitively with synthesizers of somewhat nasally timbred plucked strings, Jin finally exclaims “I need that fire yo I need something different: I'm trying to change the game.” After one final try of a beat with the same instrumental characteristics and including a small flailing female voice, the producer displays total misunderstanding of Jin's goal in finding a beat, calling her “Chinese Caroline”: mocking the tasteless blend of cultural elements and eventually calling it absolute garbage.
In the rhythm of “Learn Chinese” (another Jin track which resonates with Asian-American self-awareness and pride), Jin's ethnic identity is conveyed through the song's lyrics as well as the musical imagery, yet the style melds more into contemporary hip-hop than those beats heard in “Chinese Beats.” In “Learn Chinese,” the beat gravitates more around the bass movement, which seems to have a uniquely twanged timbre compared to the excessively booming bass many rap beats strive for. As the chorus arrives, its distinctly plucked and highly “Orientalized” tone displays a smoother blend of cross-cultural elements, unattainable in “Chinese Beats” due to their highly Americanized sounding appearance. In lieu in extracting the Asian-American identity of the performer as the highlight of the musical instrumentation, Jin (in “Learn Chinese”) promotes his identity by conveying it within the context of the hip-hop music, adding subtle “Orientalized” instrument lines which he cleverly raps over expressing his strength in Asian-American identity. By speaking the language of hip-hoppers (using traditional contemporary templates for his songs(including a booming bass, memorable chorus, and also a verbal rap hook), his message becomes clear and resounds with the listener following a listen.
Oliver Wang, in an analysis of “Learn Chinese” highlights Jin's ability to verbally debunk cultural stereotypes of Asians in his rap. Not only are his lyrics as mainly positive on this front, but his music conveys this same point as well. Through his seemless blend of notoriously African-American hip-hop elements with some foreign, almost “Oriental” timbres, Jin is able to exact his identity as an Asian American hip-hopper in two ways: on both musical fronts. In an earlier example in this same article, Chops of the Mountain Bros. (Asian American musicians) sang, on "Invisible man": “sit in the aisle in the back of class silent//'cause I can't relate//debate is about race, today that makes me out of place//only a two-sided coin so me I'm thru trying to join...//I'm disagreein with steven believin even the blind could see//that ebony and ivory could never be applied to me" (pg 7), summing up American racial awareness and also displaying the dichotomy of race in our society. Relating directly to the lyrics of Jin, which also echo the same feeling unnecessary of disclusion in the highly dichotomous racial view of mainstream society, both lyrics attempt to attack Asian-American mis-representation in extremely clever ways. Although their commercial successes have not attainable on the large scale of superstar-dom, both groundbreaking acts definitely blaze the trail for not only Asian-American, but also, other minority musicians to show their own unique identity through song and lyrics.