ジャックゼブラは、ポストインダストリアル中国のオートチューンボイスです。

As small-town Chinese rapper Jackzebra took to the Trance Party stage for his first ever UK performance last Friday (March 28), I was, admittedly, a little nervous. You see, I’ve been fascinated with his enigmatic plugg-cloud rap infusions for months now but, not only does Jackzebra rap exclusively in Chinese (ruling out 99 per cent of the crowd, including myself), he further submerges these lyrics beneath aggressive auto-tune and questionable mixing, meaning that the 1 per cent of Mandarin speakers in attendance were unlikely to get much out of his performance either. However, as Jackzebra dove into his Skylar Grey “Coming Home”-flipping hit “认真你就输了” (“If you’re serious, you lose”), prompting cries of recognition and feeble attempts at singing along from the jaw-swinging Trance Party crowd, I knew I was witnessing something special.

Over the past year, Jackzebra has become perhaps the only artist ever to enjoy simultaneous virality on both sides of the Chinese firewall. Inside, he’s emerged as part of a new wave of VPN-wielding Chinese youth expressing post-industrial gloom through futuristic rap sonics; outside, on sites like Reddit, this significance has been reduced down to the clickbait headline: ‘Chinese Bladee’. Despite this rich lore, however, when I met up with Jackzebra two days after the show, he was surprisingly… normal.

I was told to meet Jack at Abney Park Cemetery – a verdant retreat in the heart of Stoke Newington that has become somewhat of a watering hole for dog walkers across London. Jack is five minutes early; he is courteous, completely teetotal (but still polite enough to accept my gift of Magnum tonic wine*), and has no discernible odour – overall, nothing like one would expect from a 22-year old viral rap sensation.

I couldn’t help but ask: ‘Where did all that aggression come from on Friday?’ “I think that was the mask,” Jack laughs. “That’s my new thing. It allows a different energy.” Later, he tells me that he doesn’t really like crowds, that he’s actually quite ‘lazy’ and prefers the company of nature. It’s a callback to his sleepy hometown Xujing, located on the rural outskirts of Shanghai’s urban sprawl. “It’s actually quite like this,” says Jack, gesturing at the peaceful park around us.

I’m not sure if Jack meant to compare his hometown to a cemetery, but he wouldn’t have been entirely wrong to do so. Over the last decade, Xujing, like many of China’s rural villages and tier three and four cities, has experienced a rapid population drain, with most of the younger generations leaving in pursuit of work in the big cities. Permeated by creeping costs of living and the dreaded 996 work culture (9am-9pm, six days a week), life in post-Covid China is increasingly stressful, and Jack, like many other Chinese Gen Z, feels like opting out entirely.

It’s here that the true significance of both Jack’s music – alongside Chinese contemporaries Billionhappy, 1kpbs, Chalky Wong, and more – and his apparent laziness shines through. “What they are doing is giving a cultural voice to parts of China that previously have never been spotlighted,” says Lumi, founder of international electronic label Eastern Margins, and who has developed a close relationship with many of the above. “In the margins of China’s third and fourth cities, there are a million dreams lost in the crevices of internet cafes, scooter-modification shops and at the bottom of dice barrels. These artists speak to those stories, and I think that resonates.”

In the lineages of Chinese rap and electronic music, Jack and the others represent the first generation to truly make the genres their own. They build on China’s first wave of artists who translated Mandarin’s tonal inflections into syncopated rap flows ten years ago – the likes of Purple Soul, Gai, and, most importantly, Bloodz Boi, China’s first ever cloud rap artist.

While the long and winding career of Bloodz is one for another day, it’s impossible to tell the story of this new wave of Chinese artists without speaking his name. Bloodz was integral in adapting Western rap scenes to the Chinese social context, both through the smuggling of early Yung Lean and Bones releases under the Chinese firewall for domestic consumption, and through the cult status his music has enjoyed in the years since.

“I will never use English in my lyrics, that’s cringe,” Bloodz Boi told me back in January of this year. “I don’t care about the skill or the mixing, or if people will like it, I only care about emotions in my music. You have to be 100 per cent real.” Having formed somewhat of a mentor to Jackzebra in his early years, these words might as well appear on liner notes on Jack’s next release.

All of this history culminates, rather innocuously, in Jackzebra – a man whose few words, self-professed laziness, and avant-garde mixing all hide a deep social significance. As China’s rapid industrialsation is beginning to falter, Jackzebra is here to find his own place in the world, and isn’t about to let anyone else do it for him.

Read my full conversation with Jackzebra below.

What’s been the highlight of your trip so far?

Jackzebra: Oh, the black Taxi. It cost me a lot, though. I’ve downloaded Bolt now.

How did you learn such good English?

Jackzebra: I came here for summer school like ten years ago, but mostly the internet. I watch a lot of TV shows, like Top Boy and The Wire.

Where did your artist name come from?

Jackzebra: It was during my English class [at school], when I was 11 or 12 years old. I always wanted to be an artist in the future, a painting artist, a singer – I just knew I wanted to be an artist. In Chinese, my family name is Zhang, which starts with Z, and my English name is Jack. So, Jackzebra. Yeah.

It’s not like English, in Mandarin Chinese, words can mean a lot of things. Mandarin is beautiful. You can explain a lot of things in Mandarin. I can share my emotions. Share my thoughts – Jackzebra

You first began rapping in English, then switched to Mandarin Chinese, right? What made you switch?

Jackzebra: It was Bloodz Boi who told me I should try rapping in Chinese. It’s not like English, in Mandarin Chinese, words can mean a lot of things. Mandarin is beautiful. You can explain a lot of things in Mandarin. I can share my emotions. Share my thoughts.

How do you come up with your lyrics?

Jackzebra: It comes from my heart, from my soul. If it’s a good beat, I just build layers on top of it. Just feelings. I’ll listen to the beat everyday, from when I wake up to when I’m walking. Outside a restaurant. Outside my friend’s place. I can record anywhere, even in a hotel.

It seems like there are a lot of pressures on young Chinese people today. Is this something you feel, too?

Jackzebra: Yeah, it’s a big society. It’s stress. I’ve had a lot of jobs over the last four years. I worked in Pizza Hut, in my mum’s friend’s company, part-time jobs at Thom Browne and Ralph Lauren, a milk tea shop, a bookstore… a lot of jobs. I just want to do music, but the pressure is real. The stress is real. If I don’t work, I don’t have bread, so I have to work.

But, right now, the situation is getting better. I can get paid from music and doing shows. It’s especially hard [to convince] my parents. My mum is cool with me doing music, but my dad is like ‘Why are you doing this? Just find a job.’ But it’s OK.

Bloodz Boi tells me you’re pretty much the only Chinese rapper ever to be bigger outside of the country than inside.

Jackzebra: Yeah, I have a lot of Chinese haters as well. I don’t know. They just don’t get my style, but it’s OK. They will realise. [Right now,] I’m growing, but the hate is growing, too.

Sonically, your music is really connected to new rap scenes in the West, but, on the other, you’re significance feels very unique to China. Are you part of a Western movement or a Chinese one?

Jackzebra: Oh, that’s a hard question… Half and half. Yeah. My style, my sounds, my lyrics, they’re Chinese. But the information… you know, you look at Jackzebra on Instagram, Jackzebra on Spotify, he could be American right? Inside of me is Chinese. Outside, Western. Inside, Eastern.

What does the future look like for Chinese rap?

Jackzebra: Right now, the Chinese rap scene isn’t based. It still needs some time. It’s not like Chinese rock music which has been around for over 20 years, Chinese rap doesn’t have roots [yet]. In my opinion, Chinese rap is still not based.

Right now, the Chinese rap scene isn’t based. It still needs some time. It’s not like Chinese rock music which has been around for over 20 years, Chinese rap doesn’t have roots [yet] – Jackzebra

How is the club scene out there right now?

Jackzebra: I like footwork. A lot of the young people like hardstyle and trance. They’re raising up, because the older generations are still doing the techno thing, but the younger generations don’t fuck with techno anymore. They want new electronic music. [It’s] freedom and chaos.

You’ve been releasing like crazy recently. It’s been, what, three projects in the last year?

Jackzebra: Yeah, I wouldn’t call those albums. Those are mixtapes. I’m still preparing my debut album. It’s going to be really personal, about my hometown, released next year I guess.

What’s your hometown like?

Jackzebra: It’s called Xujing. Yeah, [I spent] 20 years of my life in Xujing. It’s actually like this area, it’s very peaceful. It’s not crowded like downtown Shanghai. I enjoy the peace, there’s too many things going on downtown, too many people. They’re really chill in Xujing, and it’s mostly old people because all the young people have moved downtown. They all work hard in my hometown, but they’re still chill.

What were those 20 years like?

Jackzebra: When I was a teenager, I was going out for a walk at nighttime, because the nighttime has the best air [quality] in Xujing. I would just ride my bike, listening to music. In my neighborhood, there was a small park that no one goes to.

Is that park the origins of Jackzebra, the rapper?

Jackzebra: Yeah, that’s my secret spot. My secret place.

It seems you’ve dreamt about being a rapper for quite a long time. When will you know that you’ve succeeded?

Jackzebra: I don’t have goals actually, we’ll just see in the future. Maybe one day I will do something else, like painting or being a designer. Maybe I’ll be a promoter actually, like booking artists to come to China.

Who would be on your dream show?

Jackzebra: That’s a hard question. You know FUN? They had that song ‘We Are Young’. I’d book them to play at Shanghai ALL Club. That’s my dream actually. I really liked that song when I was younger. Still do.

Peep the gallery above for more pictures from the interview.

As small-town Chinese rapper Jackzebra took to the Trance Party stage for his first ever UK performance last Friday (March 28), I was, admittedly, a little nervous. You see, I’ve been fascinated with his enigmatic plugg-cloud rap infusions for months now but, not only does Jackzebra rap exclusively in Chinese (ruling out 99 per cent of the crowd, including myself), he further submerges these lyrics beneath aggressive auto-tune and questionable mixing, meaning that the 1 per cent of Mandarin speakers in attendance were unlikely to get much out of his performance either. However, as Jackzebra dove into his Skylar Grey “Coming Home”-flipping hit “认真你就输了” (“If you’re serious, you lose”), prompting cries of recognition and feeble attempts at singing along from the jaw-swinging Trance Party crowd, I knew I was witnessing something special.

Over the past year, Jackzebra has become perhaps the only artist ever to enjoy simultaneous virality on both sides of the Chinese firewall. Inside, he’s emerged as part of a new wave of VPN-wielding Chinese youth expressing post-industrial gloom through futuristic rap sonics; outside, on sites like Reddit, this significance has been reduced down to the clickbait headline: ‘Chinese Bladee’. Despite this rich lore, however, when I met up with Jackzebra two days after the show, he was surprisingly… normal.

I was told to meet Jack at Abney Park Cemetery – a verdant retreat in the heart of Stoke Newington that has become somewhat of a watering hole for dog walkers across London. Jack is five minutes early; he is courteous, completely teetotal (but still polite enough to accept my gift of Magnum tonic wine*), and has no discernible odour – overall, nothing like one would expect from a 22-year old viral rap sensation.

I couldn’t help but ask: ‘Where did all that aggression come from on Friday?’ “I think that was the mask,” Jack laughs. “That’s my new thing. It allows a different energy.” Later, he tells me that he doesn’t really like crowds, that he’s actually quite ‘lazy’ and prefers the company of nature. It’s a callback to his sleepy hometown Xujing, located on the rural outskirts of Shanghai’s urban sprawl. “It’s actually quite like this,” says Jack, gesturing at the peaceful park around us.

I’m not sure if Jack meant to compare his hometown to a cemetery, but he wouldn’t have been entirely wrong to do so. Over the last decade, Xujing, like many of China’s rural villages and tier three and four cities, has experienced a rapid population drain, with most of the younger generations leaving in pursuit of work in the big cities. Permeated by creeping costs of living and the dreaded 996 work culture (9am-9pm, six days a week), life in post-Covid China is increasingly stressful, and Jack, like many other Chinese Gen Z, feels like opting out entirely.

It’s here that the true significance of both Jack’s music – alongside Chinese contemporaries Billionhappy, 1kpbs, Chalky Wong, and more – and his apparent laziness shines through. “What they are doing is giving a cultural voice to parts of China that previously have never been spotlighted,” says Lumi, founder of international electronic label Eastern Margins, and who has developed a close relationship with many of the above. “In the margins of China’s third and fourth cities, there are a million dreams lost in the crevices of internet cafes, scooter-modification shops and at the bottom of dice barrels. These artists speak to those stories, and I think that resonates.”

In the lineages of Chinese rap and electronic music, Jack and the others represent the first generation to truly make the genres their own. They build on China’s first wave of artists who translated Mandarin’s tonal inflections into syncopated rap flows ten years ago – the likes of Purple Soul, Gai, and, most importantly, Bloodz Boi, China’s first ever cloud rap artist.

While the long and winding career of Bloodz is one for another day, it’s impossible to tell the story of this new wave of Chinese artists without speaking his name. Bloodz was integral in adapting Western rap scenes to the Chinese social context, both through the smuggling of early Yung Lean and Bones releases under the Chinese firewall for domestic consumption, and through the cult status his music has enjoyed in the years since.

“I will never use English in my lyrics, that’s cringe,” Bloodz Boi told me back in January of this year. “I don’t care about the skill or the mixing, or if people will like it, I only care about emotions in my music. You have to be 100 per cent real.” Having formed somewhat of a mentor to Jackzebra in his early years, these words might as well appear on liner notes on Jack’s next release.

All of this history culminates, rather innocuously, in Jackzebra – a man whose few words, self-professed laziness, and avant-garde mixing all hide a deep social significance. As China’s rapid industrialsation is beginning to falter, Jackzebra is here to find his own place in the world, and isn’t about to let anyone else do it for him.

Read my full conversation with Jackzebra below.

What’s been the highlight of your trip so far?

Jackzebra: Oh, the black Taxi. It cost me a lot, though. I’ve downloaded Bolt now.

How did you learn such good English?

Jackzebra: I came here for summer school like ten years ago, but mostly the internet. I watch a lot of TV shows, like Top Boy and The Wire.

Where did your artist name come from?

Jackzebra: It was during my English class [at school], when I was 11 or 12 years old. I always wanted to be an artist in the future, a painting artist, a singer – I just knew I wanted to be an artist. In Chinese, my family name is Zhang, which starts with Z, and my English name is Jack. So, Jackzebra. Yeah.

It’s not like English, in Mandarin Chinese, words can mean a lot of things. Mandarin is beautiful. You can explain a lot of things in Mandarin. I can share my emotions. Share my thoughts – Jackzebra

You first began rapping in English, then switched to Mandarin Chinese, right? What made you switch?

Jackzebra: It was Bloodz Boi who told me I should try rapping in Chinese. It’s not like English, in Mandarin Chinese, words can mean a lot of things. Mandarin is beautiful. You can explain a lot of things in Mandarin. I can share my emotions. Share my thoughts.

How do you come up with your lyrics?

Jackzebra: It comes from my heart, from my soul. If it’s a good beat, I just build layers on top of it. Just feelings. I’ll listen to the beat everyday, from when I wake up to when I’m walking. Outside a restaurant. Outside my friend’s place. I can record anywhere, even in a hotel.

It seems like there are a lot of pressures on young Chinese people today. Is this something you feel, too?

Jackzebra: Yeah, it’s a big society. It’s stress. I’ve had a lot of jobs over the last four years. I worked in Pizza Hut, in my mum’s friend’s company, part-time jobs at Thom Browne and Ralph Lauren, a milk tea shop, a bookstore… a lot of jobs. I just want to do music, but the pressure is real. The stress is real. If I don’t work, I don’t have bread, so I have to work.

But, right now, the situation is getting better. I can get paid from music and doing shows. It’s especially hard [to convince] my parents. My mum is cool with me doing music, but my dad is like ‘Why are you doing this? Just find a job.’ But it’s OK.

Bloodz Boi tells me you’re pretty much the only Chinese rapper ever to be bigger outside of the country than inside.

Jackzebra: Yeah, I have a lot of Chinese haters as well. I don’t know. They just don’t get my style, but it’s OK. They will realise. [Right now,] I’m growing, but the hate is growing, too.

Sonically, your music is really connected to new rap scenes in the West, but, on the other, you’re significance feels very unique to China. Are you part of a Western movement or a Chinese one?

Jackzebra: Oh, that’s a hard question… Half and half. Yeah. My style, my sounds, my lyrics, they’re Chinese. But the information… you know, you look at Jackzebra on Instagram, Jackzebra on Spotify, he could be American right? Inside of me is Chinese. Outside, Western. Inside, Eastern.

What does the future look like for Chinese rap?

Jackzebra: Right now, the Chinese rap scene isn’t based. It still needs some time. It’s not like Chinese rock music which has been around for over 20 years, Chinese rap doesn’t have roots [yet]. In my opinion, Chinese rap is still not based.

Right now, the Chinese rap scene isn’t based. It still needs some time. It’s not like Chinese rock music which has been around for over 20 years, Chinese rap doesn’t have roots [yet] – Jackzebra

How is the club scene out there right now?

Jackzebra: I like footwork. A lot of the young people like hardstyle and trance. They’re raising up, because the older generations are still doing the techno thing, but the younger generations don’t fuck with techno anymore. They want new electronic music. [It’s] freedom and chaos.

You’ve been releasing like crazy recently. It’s been, what, three projects in the last year?

Jackzebra: Yeah, I wouldn’t call those albums. Those are mixtapes. I’m still preparing my debut album. It’s going to be really personal, about my hometown, released next year I guess.

What’s your hometown like?

Jackzebra: It’s called Xujing. Yeah, [I spent] 20 years of my life in Xujing. It’s actually like this area, it’s very peaceful. It’s not crowded like downtown Shanghai. I enjoy the peace, there’s too many things going on downtown, too many people. They’re really chill in Xujing, and it’s mostly old people because all the young people have moved downtown. They all work hard in my hometown, but they’re still chill.

What were those 20 years like?

Jackzebra: When I was a teenager, I was going out for a walk at nighttime, because the nighttime has the best air [quality] in Xujing. I would just ride my bike, listening to music. In my neighborhood, there was a small park that no one goes to.

Is that park the origins of Jackzebra, the rapper?

Jackzebra: Yeah, that’s my secret spot. My secret place.

It seems you’ve dreamt about being a rapper for quite a long time. When will you know that you’ve succeeded?

Jackzebra: I don’t have goals actually, we’ll just see in the future. Maybe one day I will do something else, like painting or being a designer. Maybe I’ll be a promoter actually, like booking artists to come to China.

Who would be on your dream show?

Jackzebra: That’s a hard question. You know FUN? They had that song ‘We Are Young’. I’d book them to play at Shanghai ALL Club. That’s my dream actually. I really liked that song when I was younger. Still do.

Peep the gallery above for more pictures from the interview.