Killer beats from the Philippines to Indonesia
Published: 26 Sep 2024
By: Daniel Peters
Time taken : >15mins
In hip hop, everything is sacred, but nothing is out of bounds. For a genre that is relatively new—at about 40 years young compared to the decades-spanning legacy of pop and rock music—hip hop is everywhere. And it will continue to be around. Like its forefathers once declared: hip hop don’t stop.
At the core of hip hop is rapping—a vocal delivery style that favours storytelling, poetry, charisma and imagination. Driving this foundation is an insatiable need to succeed and thrive, with an undercurrent of hardship powering some of hip hop’s hungriest anthems.
Hip hop is undeniably a form of music for, and by, the American Black communities that introduced it to the world. And that is what has made its proliferation around the world all the more stronger: you can find hip hop music in the Philippines or Taiwan that may sound like the boom-bap of 1990s New York, but its lyrics speak to the dreams and nightmares of its fellow country-people.
Southeast Asian hip hop has been gaining traction over the past decade or so. But before we get into some of its flag-bearers and upstarts, let’s take a look back at how we got here.
Hip hop is a style of music, but it is a subculture too. And within that landscape is a variety of people who make hip hop what it is: rappers, producers, breakdancers, turntablists, graffiti artists. Hip hop began with neighbourhood dance parties in 1970s America, where DJs would spin countless soul and funk records for hungry crowds.
These DJs weren't just good music selectors—they knew how to get to the good part. Within these dusty, scuffed-up records were drum breaks. These form the backbone of how hip hop began: with a groove that could let the party go on forever. Breakdancers would find their rhythm in these breaks, sometimes competing with each other on who could bust the best moves over these samples of music.
Co-currently, party emcees would find their own words to lay over the breaks, giving birth to the art of rap. The Sugarhill Gang's Rapper's Delight, released in 1979, compacted these elements into a radio-friendly single that introduced the wider world to the street movements of hip hop.
Back then, drum breaks were found on old soul, funk and R&B records, but these would be supplanted by—or, some would argue, complimented by—beat patterns made on the Roland TR-808, a drum machine introduced in the 1980s that quickly found its way into the recording studios.
Hip hop’s history over four-odd decades reads like a breathtaking rundown on how fast music can evolve. It was fitting that hip hop exploded in popularity and diversity in the 1980s, which was a decade where an entire pop music industry started transitioning into an endlessly synthesized, digital realm.
Hip hop can be played by live bands, but its foundation lies in its most captivating beats that can be generated through digital software or drum machine hardware. The newfound freedom in composing music lent a hand to hip hop producers, who could generate hand-carved grooves with the press of a button.
So, over time, hip hop has grown with different styles based on where they came from. What is now known as old-school hip hop is the result of those neighbourhood parties—dancefloor-pleasing anthems with the vitality of disco music and affable lyrical style of a grinning emcee.
New-school hip hop built itself on this premise, with its discovery of drum machines lending a more cosmic and spacey edge—its most potent example being Afrika Bambaataa’s Planet Rock, which itself was inspired by the then-emerging form of electronic music by bands like Germany’s Kraftwerk and Japan’s Yellow Magic Orchestra.
From there, it splintered and grew with acceleration: hip hop became regional, with different scenes of America proudly bearing the name of the area they came from. Be it East Coast hip hop, West Coast hip hop, Southern hip hop—your roots are everything.
For these artists, examining their surroundings would result in clear-eyed testimonies and diatribes against the injustices one would see: racial discrimination, poverty, addiction. This is why rap quickly became entrenched in the often dark and violent realities of its many artists—but it’s also become the platform for their ambitions to thrive within, or outside, it. Its political strokes are, of course, just one side of hip hop these days.
Hip hop’s beginnings end here, because everything after that gets almost overwhelming to summarise. But to put it simply: hip hop lives on because the meeting of its two distinct elements—drum beats and lyrical rhymes—never gets old. It just evolves.
Historically, Southeast Asian hip hop started in the Philippines, a country that enjoyed close ties with America. The migrant communities of Filipino Americans were key in introducing the philosophies and recordings of hip hop to their countrymen back home.
In 1980, a year after the release of Rapper’s Delight, comedian Dyords Javier released his own Tagalog parody of it titled Na Onseng Delight, making it the first rap recording on this side of the world. It may have been a jab at an incredibly popular song, but it nonetheless possessed hip hop’s DNA: lyrical style with substance.
Fast-forward ten years later, a 26-year-old aspiring rapper Francis Magalona released his debut album Yo!, which brought hip hop to the Filipino mainstream. Around this time, an emerging group from Kuala Lumpur named Krash Kozz began dominating their local airwaves. All the while, in 1991, a group that called themselves MC Siva C & The Kopi Kat Klan (the brainchild of late guitarist and producer Siva Choy) released the album Why U So Like Dat? unto unsuspecting Singaporeans with hip hop playfulness and a lot of Singlish.
They, along with Construction Sight—a duo comprising Sheikh Haikel and Ashidiq Ghazali—paved the way for hip hop to shine in Singapore.
Hip hop wears many colours—a dash of gold, a splash of blood red, and swathes of green to signify its hard-won successes (or dreams of success). But, really, hip hop has evolved so much that, these days, the pairing of words to beats comes in so many forms. And, in Southeast Asia, you can find different artists expressing their stories and melodies in many imaginative ways. Here’s some of them.
In Cambodia, no one in rap shines brighter than VannDa, a rapper who was recently seen on television screens at the 2024 Olympics closing ceremony alongside French indie rock band Phoenix. His 2021 song Time to Rise best exemplifies his ability to bridge Cambodia’s vast, yet complicated history with the contemporary sounds of now—with powerful traditional instruments meeting fiery trap production.
Over the past decade or so, Indonesian hip hop has staked its claim on the map with artists like Rich Brian and RAMENGVRL. However, an undeniable figurehead of its scene is TuanTigabelas, a flagbearer for hip hop’s boom bap roots—tasty and catchy rhymes over pristine jazzy beats. The rapper glides ever so smoothly on his tracks that you’ll have to listen closely to understand what he’s waxing lyrical about. When you do, you’ll find a passionate advocate for grassroots issues—ranging from women’s rights to climate change and the preservation of endangered animals.
In Vietnam, hip hop is alive and thriving, thanks in part to a growing (if new) scene of artists, along with the popularity of talent competition TV show Rap Viet. One of its past contestants, V Thang, has since blossomed into her own. Earlier this year, she issued her debut EP V Thang Is Everything, where trap, R&B and hyperpop collide with the vivid (and sometimes manic) energy of V Thang, who alternates between rapping and singing with ease—her vocals sometimes smothered with Auto-Tune, sometimes raw and in your face.
2023 marked a year that turned Filipino rapper Hev Abi into a recognizable talent around the world. Songs like Para Sa Street and WELCOME2DTQ never shy away from the gritty realities that Hev Abi faced growing up, but the tenderness that flows in his music only serve his ability to be a multi-faceted artist with much to offer. Check out his performance of Walang Alam below and tell us you aren’t already swooning.
Over the past decade, Zamaera has fought tooth-and-nail to rise up to Malaysia’s legacy of hip hop—she’s since done that and so much more. With confessional lyrics delivered through rhythm, heartbreak and righteous fury, Zamaera has become one of Southeast Asia’s most reliable and charismatic hip hop artists with plenty of stories to tell.
The music of Singapore’s Mary Sue plays like fragments of a diary recorded on cassette tape. The rapper delivers his verses with a recognisable drawl, and his verses leave no punctuation to the imagination—just endless scribblings of a restless mind living on five hours of sleep. Yet, press play on his newest album Voice Memos From a Winter In China and you’ll find warmth and self-actualisation that rings with utmost clarity.
Catch Indonesia’s rap sensation TuanTigabelas dropping fire bars and killer beats on 11 Oct, Fri at Baybeats 2024.
Contributed by:
Daniel Peters is a freelance journalist in Singapore. Currently a contributor at NME Asia and radio DJ at Mediacorp’s Indiego, he is formerly from Singapore Community Radio, Bandwagon Asia and MTV Asia.
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