Bloodz Boi: The humble godfather of Chinese underground rap

In 2017, rap went mainstream in China. The moment is easy to pinpoint: hip-hop competition show The Rap of China. MC culture had been bubbling in the country for years prior – generally, as with most musical imports, regarded with suspicion by government authorities – but the series opened the floodgates. Broadcast by the Baidu-owned iQIYI streaming platform, the show accrued one billion views within its first month and, by the time the second season rolled around, hip-hop had been catapulted from a fringe, foreign influence into the core of Chinese pop culture. Rappers were soon advertising energy drinks during the show’s commercial breaks, and kids all over the country were picking up microphones with the hope of achieving fame and glory on the series.

Bloodz Boi, however, represents a different lineage.

Speaking to Dazed first in January, and later in June, of this year, the Beijing-born artist recalls how he was invited to appear on The Rap of China’s explosive first season. “It wasn’t like it is now – back then, the Chinese hip-hop scene was very small so they wanted everyone [to participate],” Bloodz Boi explains. “It’s a commercial business, I said, ‘They will fuck the underground’. I felt a little down watching everyone around me get famous, but that was the only time. My fate isn’t about being an artist, it’s about being a good person.”

Indeed, Bloodz Boi’s journey has always been a little more personal. Solidly built, with tattoos scrawled across his face, his presence might be seen as intimidating. But one doesn’t need to know Chinese to feel the visceral emotions pouring out of his music. Take 2020 release “across the sea my dreams are made in silence”: opening with nursery rhyme-like chords, Bloodz’ reverb-drenched voice delivers a bittersweet elegy, childlike in its simplicity yet wizened in its depth.

The song’s title is also an apt description of Bloodz Boi’s career. In the early 2010s, when Bloodz Boi was just a teenager and Chinese hip-hop was virtually unheard of, the enigmatic artist found himself voyaging beyond the Chinese firewall in search of sounds that represented him. VPN in hand, he stumbled across the cloud rap scene emerging on SoundCloud at the time – first Michigan rap anti-hero Bones and, later, Yung Lean.

“Back then, there wasn’t really an underground artist for Chinese rappers to learn from, so when Yung Lean started music, I was shocked,” says Bloodz Boi. “I felt like his style was easy to copy – I thought, ‘I can’t be Bones, I don’t have his energy, but I can make this kind of sound’. The first songs I uploaded, around 2015, were very Yung Lean influenced.”

As the years went by and Chinese rap became commercially viable, Bloodz Boi stayed focused on this distinct sound, motivated more by communicating his unseen pain than generating a chart hit. “It’s easy to get people hype but, to give people your feelings? That’s hard,” says Bloodz Boi. “I don’t care about mixing, all I care about is being 100 per cent real in my music.”

What’s particularly beautiful about Bloodz Boi’s story is that his unwavering commitment to authenticity paid off. His electric 2022 album, 365, was released on Stockholm’s YEAR00001 label, sitting alongside releases from Ecco2k, Bladee and Yung Lean, while transient 2024 follow-up time & place was produced entirely by Bones’ labelmate cat soup, and even features a verse from the man himself. “I think it’s one of my favourite Bones verses of all time, he really cared about the song,” says Bloodz Boi, a rare glint of pride evident on his face.

Perhaps the biggest testament to Bloodz Boi’s legacy, however, survives in China’s newest generation of rappers, currently breaking virality on both sides of the firewall. Bloodz became somewhat of a mentor to Surf Gang’s first signee Asian signee (and the often mis-labelled ‘Chinese Bladee’), Jackzebra, with the duo’s collaborative album, BloodZebra, set to release in the coming months. Indeed, Bloodz Boi’s imprint is felt all over a scene recently branded by Eastern Margins as the ‘Nu China Movement’: young, Chinese misfits like Billion Happy and Miriam Dolla who scoured the internet in search of community, holding little regard for clean mixes or the mainstream dream that The Rap of China promises.

Still, the underground pioneer is reluctant to take too much credit. While this new generation of artists are set to take his sound to new heights, Bloodz Boi is already pursuing a different direction: digital folk music. “People always tell me that I’ve [changed history], but I don’t think about that,” Bloodz Boi reflects. “I only ever wanted to express myself, and I think folk is the only way I want to do it now.”

Ultimately, it is Bloodz Boi’s ability to look beneath the façades that makes him truly special. Beyond the binaries of east and west, east and west, rap and folk, he’s only ever been concerned with one thing: authentic expression.

Below, Chinese underground rap pioneer Bloodz Boi further unpacks his trailblazing career.

How were those early experiences discovering music beyond the Chinese firewall?

Bloodz Boi: In China, we have the internet, but it’s very limited, right? When I was in high school, I would buy CDs, but it’s not a real CD – we call it ‘factory trash’ and they have a hole in every disc to make sure it stays in the garbage. Somebody would buy these CDs from America or somewhere and sell them to us, that’s how I found Radiohead, Pink Floyd, the Stone Roses and things like that.

Back then, SoundCloud was blocked, but we had our own SoundCloud inside the firewall. I wanted to know everything. If I listened to a song, I wanted to know the producer, I wanted to know the writer. When Baidu couldn’t give me that information, I needed Google, so I used a VPN to explore the world and upload the music to our websites for other people to listen to.

Do you think you were destined to be an artist?

Bloodz Boi: Not really. In school, I was a really good student and my parents also had a high education. My childhood dream was to be a scientist, but a lot of things broke that dream. Luckily, I found music to keep living, to keep breathing. If I didn’t find that, maybe something else, maybe I would’ve started cooking. My fate isn’t about being an artist, I just want to be a good person. My art is a reflection of myself – if I’m a bad person, then my music will be bad, too.

Where did your name come from?

Bloodz Boi: I don’t want to say why I picked the name in the beginning, but it has a different meaning now. My Chinese artist name is the same – if you translate it, it’s also kind of like ‘Blood Boy’. I think of blood as something that everyone needs, you live by it. Sometimes I hear people say they really like my music. Especially Chinese people who understand my lyrics, they say my music helped them to get through a bad time, it’s awesome. But, in another way, they also saved me, because I don’t know what else I can do if I don’t make music. I don’t make music for money, for fame, I make music to live.

Where does the Bloodz Boi logo come from?

Bloodz Boi: It’s my friend, an artist from South America. He was one of my very first internet friends, and I wanted him to make some art for me. I’ve used it for a long time. I have another, newer one, but I like to keep the original.

Music is like that, if you listen patiently, you can feel what they see

I noticed most of your song titles are in English. Do you also use English when uploading your songs in China?

Bloodz Boi: It’s only on the Western web, because if you like use a Chinese name, it’s really hard to search. I told Jack[zebra] to do that, too.

My lyrics are only in Chinese, I will never change that. When I see a Chinese rapper rap in English, I think it’s cringe. That’s not your mother tongue, you just want to be American. Even if you don’t understand, you can still feel [lyrics]. When I was young, the first rap is listened to was the Dirty South, UGK and Bun B. I didn’t know what they were talking about, but I kept listening and I felt something. Music is like that, if you listen patiently, you can feel what they see.

Where is your music headed in the future, then?

Bloodz Boi: I think time & place might be the end of my rap stuff, I want my music to be more experimental, like digital folk. More like [2022 EP] a crying poem. More instrumental, and recordings from my life. I’ve been influenced by a lot of the hip-hop stuff, but, inside of me, I’m actually a quiet guy. I don’t really like to have fun, I don’t turn up and shit. That’s the real me and I have to face that.

I was speaking to my friend, Doon Kanda, in Japan. He told me, ‘You have to follow your heart’. He has a pretty big following, but he recently switched to folk music, too. With hype music, you can perform a big concert and make everybody happy, but, with the emotional stuff, you have to be very real.