Right now, I'm listening to Drunken Tiger's 8th album and can't help but be amazed by Tiger JK's musical and lyrical ability. This made me wonder how other countries' hiphop/rap music are, specially China and Japan. I want to know if there is anyone even close to Tiger JK's level of awesome. Readers of soompi, please educate me!

Yo man, I'm all for what you said kkk
Korean undergrounds ftw kkk
Personally, I think Korean rap are like extreme tongue twists, you feel so good doing it ^^

esens and simon dominic are my tops man!

i dont understand a word they're saying but japanese hiphop/rap is pretty good. at least beat wise it is.
no idea about other asian countries.
western countries. well as long as its not mainstream then lyrically i dont think they're half bad.
but yes i find i like korean hiphop/rap the best.
underground-ers are always more talented.

Korean rap sucks. lol no offense koreans suck at rapping for real. Korean rappers are only imitating mainstream rap music not old school rap. The only part of hip hop koreans are great at is breakdancing.

mainstream rap = fake rap
Oldshool rap = real rap music (hip hop music)

Tupac, Bone thugs n Harmony, Lupe Fiasco, Eminem, Jay-Z?, Nas, just to name a few.

Mainstream rap = mc mong
Oldschool rap = Soul Company

Korean rap are the best man, wt are you talking about?

Shing02 from Japan is a great hip hop artist. You should listen to his mixes with Nujabes- Love Sick

To be honest each country's hip hop artist has its own unique tastes and such . I dont believe one country's hiphop artists are better then other country's hip hop artists.

I personally like the sound of Chinese rap the best, though I can't understand a word of it~

And Thailand's got some nice rappers in Buddha Bless, Joey Boy, and Thaitanium :3

I think American rap is the best

Korean and Japanese rap are a copy or product of American rap, because the origins of rap is in America.

I bet you for each beat they use in other countries a similar to better one can be found in American music.

If you ask those Korean or Japanese rappers who are their idols, I bet you they are like Tupac or something.

Wherever something came from, that's where you can find the best of it, because that's where it evolved and developed, the rest are just branches from it.

Korean rap and Japanese rap are merely branches of the rap which originated in the Bronx, New York.

Well this is silly, why would anyone make a topic like this?

Obviously blacks in America have the best rapping, I mean I'm pretty sure it originated from them (unless I'm horribly wrong).

I'm not saying that K-Rap or J-Rap or any other country that does it is horrible, I mean certain ways of rapping can originiate because of a country's language but to me, American rap from black performers is the real kinda rap cause it came from them and pretty much most of what other people do is them tryna copy or imitate their success (not that is a bad thing of course, if you like their music then it's most likely you'll follow em).

Imitation is the best form of flattery.

As long as it has struggle and soul its good.
if its about dancing in the club its the suck.

i'm not a big fan of Korean raps, i've heard a bunch of them say "b*tch" and the n word
and they don't even know what it means... it just really pisses me off

but i love Eminem. LOL XDDD

@chamisul, mc mong is just a entertainer, not a rapper.

it's gay ppl listening to rap artists like 50cent, nelly, soulja boy, and don't know wtf rap and hip hop is about. rap music and hip hop music is the same thing. i'm a rapper, ask me any questions. lol basically all the kpop artists are wannabe rappers. korean and new school american rappers fail when it comes to rapping. they got no style of rapping of their own. it's like they are speaking really fast or just trying to sound hardcore/gangster.


real rap music - talks things related to hip hop culture

Gang Starr
Eric. B Rakim
Nas
KRS-One
Big L
Mos Def


fake rap music - all they talk about is money, drugs, gangs, pimps, shooting, and girls

50cent
soulja boy
lil wayne
G-Unit
All other Korean rap artists...

^ As if not mention the NWA. They really put rap on the map during the early 90s.

Fake? You gotta be kidding me. Whether it's about drugs and sex or about life's struggles and wisdom, it's rap. 'Real hip hop' is just not generic. Lil Wayne, TI, Drake, Jay-Z, etc all comes up with lines that are just off the hook. If you think that's not rap, I don't know what you'd call it. I'm not disrespecting the underground artists, but mainstream artists need some respect too. Korean artists like Tiger JK, Simon D, and the members of Dynamic Duo to name a few are great as well.

Tasha, is the best femcee i've heard in korea and would beat any female rapper in America that i know of. And she mixes that with her singing ability and it just goes off.

I wouldnt go as far as saying that Korean Rap is the best rap in the world, yes there are standouts like the Movement Crew (tiger jk, tasha etc) but there are some pretty awesome rappers in other countries too. Where do you think korean rappers get their inspiration from?

Is Tiger JK the best rapper in all of Korea?
That's all you got?

o.0

Tiger Jk is straight but i prefer deep flow.

korean raps good but translated into English it looses it heat. I feel american is the best we started it and still master the mic.There is to many good rap artist that revolutionize the game
Tupac
Notorious BIg
Cypress Hill
beastie Boys
sugar Hill gang
Run DMC
Public Enemy
N W A
Missy Elliot
lil wayne
jay-Z
Grand Master Flash
Def jam
Cash Money
Asylum Records
Atlantic Records

I'm glad to see different parts of the world from Germany to Japan are influence by Black culture and music.As long they respect were the roots of hip hop comes from and understand its a part of black History it doesn't matter who is doing it best as long they do it with heart and soul. There is one thing that is part of black culture is celebration with all. we just wanna procreate not discriminate. spread love not hate.

lil wayne ain't rap, it's pop or just plain fake hip hop music. there are only rap parts in some of his songs, but's it's not really rap music.

Korean artists from Korea are so ridiculous. They think rapping is about speaking really fast. They don't know wat da fawk rap is about. I can smoke those mofos in a rap jam.

The mainstream rappers like 50cent, g-unit, jayz, tupac, etc are all about the money. these guys used to be really good and their music is real hip hop back then. They had to write bad lyrics to get into mainstream and make riches.

for real hip hop, check out rap music back in the 80s or early 90s.

Plenty of underground Korean rap actually sounds more like old school American rap and doesn't sound like Lil Wayne, 50 Cent, Soulja Boy, etc. in their lyrical themes, choice of beats, and style of flow. The rappers from Soul Company come to mind, for example. May I ask which Korean rappers from Korea you're referring to? It sounds like you're talking about very mainstream Korean "rap," which is not common and hardly every actually rap, and pop group "rappers." Love 'em or hate 'em, Tiger JK (so he got his start in Cali, sure, but his career has been in Korea and in Korean), Verbal Jint, Kebee, and plenty of others seriously don't just talk fast in Korean and call it rap. You sound like you don't know your stuff when it comes to actual Korean rap.

That said, I still think America does it best. It's the most established here, it's been part of the culture for decades and gone through more stages of development here, there are just more people doing it in all sorts of different styles, and it's accepted as a musical genre much more than in Asia in general and much more on the average North American person's radar at least to some degree. It's tough to make a living as a serious rapper in Korea because of the censorship on Korea's airwaves and TV and because the hip-hop acts that do make it and appeal to the broader public have done it so far by mainstreaming themselves. Hell, even mainstream artists aren't pulling in a lot of revenue from album and single sales these days, so how much worse is it if you have a much smaller fanbase in the underground only? It's great how more Korean rappers are 100% from Korea now, but the underground there depended really strongly on an influx of Koreans from English-speaking countries, especially the U.S. for its start and its growth, not to mention that Korean rap artists will readily name prominent American rappers as their primary sources of inspiration.

I actually listened to Japanese rap before I listened to Korean, but I disliked the number of Japanese artists trying to do "gangsta rap" and the number of rappers in Japan who seemed to really be trying too hard. It seemed to me like a lot of the Japanese rap I heard was either so-called "party rap" that was lighthearted and more like pop or an imitation of hardcore American gangsta rap, which has never been my favorite rap sound. There are a few artists from Japan I like, and domestic hip-hop is better respected and more popular there than in the rest of Asia, but the types of sounds I like in terms of beats and the sound of the rapper's flow are just more common in Korean rap. Doesn't hurt that I understand it more than Japanese, either.

I've heard some underground rap in Mandarin and Cantonese, and some of it was quite good, but as far as I can tell there isn't a very big rap scene in any Chinese dialect right now, and I've heard more bad than good, to be honest. Rap seems to still be in its infancy in China, HK and Taiwan. Same for Vietnamese rap: it's out there, but a lot of it's not that good and there's very little of it compared to in Japan or Korea. Actually, the best Vietnamese rap I've heard has consistently been from Vietnamese Americans, Canadians, or Australians and not actually straight from Vietnam at all. I've heard a little bit of Thai rap, but there doesn't seem to be very much of it at all.

Since nobody's even mentioned it, I also think there are a lot of talented rappers from Latin America rapping in Spanish. I'm not talking about reggaeton here, I mean straight-up rap in Spanish, which is very often about social issues like widespread poverty, government corruption, immigration/emigration, and violence. There are a lot of independent rap acts in Spanish out there. I also like how some Spanish language hip-hop acts incorporate traditional styles of rhythms and melodies into their work, like Orishas, who are originally from Cuba. France has a relatively strong rap scene in Europe, but I'm not too knowledgable about it more specifically and don't understand French. The US, Korea, and Japan are not the only places with decent rap scenes.

To summarize, since this is a really long and kind of disjointed post, I'll say that American rap comes first for me, then I'm not sure whether to choose Korean rap or Spanish-language rap from various Latin American countries, but I listen to more rap in Korean and like how a lot of it is very laidback and sounds more polished along with very little hardcore gangsta rap type of stuff going on, so I'll go with Korea for my second. Japan is up there as one of the countries where rap has really taken hold and grown well, but I'm personally not partial to more than a few of the many Japanese rappers I've heard. As for the rest of the world, there aren't very many countries with more than a very small rap scene that I know of, though I've heard rap from France, Brazil, Nigeria, Britain, Australia, Germany, Denmark, Israel, and a few others.

I like Outsider.

And really old school rap from the 80s-90s, good stuff, actually rhymed (resembling poetry), and not always about cars and pimping.

i prefer chinese rap
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSxnfKt95nA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdIsgsyrGIk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txcMCKHSeY4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_zHq6TgNQA

sick beats. nice flow.

I've heard some pretty awesome Korean rap, wish I could recall the names