There are several reasons Hip Hop culture hasn’t made a 100% seamless transition to a Chinese audience. Some are historical, others are cultural, logistical, etc. This also means that if you’re into Hip Hop and living in China you jump on any chance to get your fix of some halfway decent rhymes - so I can only imagine a part of the audience was completely blindsided by the raw, unadulterated dopeness of Jay Electronica. The JUE Festival is a long-running and time-honored staple of the Shanghai contemporary culture scene. Its goal is to bring together the most hard-hitting and out of the box DJs, dancers, rock artists, etc. to showcase the best of creative China. The event has been growing consistently for six years, so it’s about time they got a headliner like Jay Electronica. The New Orleans native is one of the few left willing to build a career on lyricism alone, and is the golden boy of today’s die-hard old-school Hip Hop heads. His narrative spans the Nation of Islam and Christianity in the dirty South to gold chains and battle rapping. Jay Electronica’s been grinding since a 2007 MySpace upload, and was signed by Jay Z to Roc Nation three years later. In short, anybody in Shanghai who had a mild understanding of Hip Hop was at Arkham that night. The first thing that has to be addressed here is the opener set. It was ill. And by ill I mean these were maybe the best live music acts I’d seen in China. The first artist was a French national who rapped in Chinese, followed by a three-part local group with a female vocalist, and capped off by the Taiwanese commercial success Miss Ko. So by the time Jay walked out on stage the vibes were already palpable. The rapper came out in a Bruce Lee-style kung fu top, said some words of welcome to his first Chinese audience, and went straight into his classic verse off Act I: Eternal Sunshine. Jay’s level of performing talent was immediately obvious, rolling through track after track of cult classics with the audience rhyming alongside him. Occasionally he’d motion for his DJ to cut the beat, and redeliver his lyrics a capella at half speed to give them the chance to really sink in. Watching Jay own the stage was like watching a young Killer Mike in action. At one point he stopped the show to get some audience members (including this reviewer) on stage to dance and rap with him. Next thing you know, he’d be standing in the audience in a tumultuous sea of fans. Jay’s been signed for only a few years but has the stage presence of a seasoned veteran, and the crowd was alive with devoted fans and Hip Hop dance circles. When the time came for the show to close, Jay Electronica did it with style, and spent the next twenty minutes wading through the crowd signing autographs. He chatted with his fans, and the room was buzzing with that beautiful Hip Hop afterglow. He said his goodbyes and left through a back door, leaving the audience to slowly trickle out, and wrapping up another flawless night of rap culture at Arkham. Event: Jay Electronica and Miss KO - Jue Festival 2015 Venue: Arkham (1 Wulumuqi Lu, near Hengshan Lu 乌鲁木齐路1号, 近衡山路) Date: 18 March, 2015 This article was written by Adan Kohnhorst. Send an email to [email protected] to get in touch.