Singapore hip hop
Singapore hip hop is a collective of hip hop music, graffiti arts, deejaying/turntablism, break dancing and beatboxing, which are performed by hip hop enthusiasts who are of Singapore descent mainly from the four races of the metropolis; the Chinese, Malays, Indians and the Eurasian. This article and its contents are exact up-to-date, through first-person written documents and oral accounts. This article focuses primarily on Singapore hip hop icons, discography, historical events, DMC World DJ Championship representatives, in and out of Singapore. This article also focuses on how Singapore has its hip hop origins and culture scene in South East Asia in the mid-1980s, largely due to the country's geographically international sea port location for military and worldwide trading connections, one of which is, with the United States where the hip hop culture was originated.
History
Rap music released in Singapore was primarily in English and in different languages and dialects such as Mandarin Chinese, Bahasa Melayu and Tamil. A Singapore version of the English language called Singlish surfaced from the earliest Singapore’s hip hop music release from a defunct group called “Kopi Kat Klan”.
In the late 1990s, a rap-duo called Construction Sight (Sheikh Haikel and Ashidiq Ghazali) was cited as the most influential rappers in the country and being the first to release mainstream rap music through their crowned success in Asia Bagus. Their first mainstream release was under Pony Canyon.
In Canada, Masia One of Merdeka Music is cited as the most successful Singapore-born, female rapper in the music industry of the island.
In 2011, was the year, Graffiti received the most shine as AsNo Doink & Clogtwo represented Singapore and was placed 2nd in the Asia Wall-Lords Finals which is the highest accolades any graffiti artiste have achieved in Singapore. And in 2014, Asno Doink represented Singapore & Asia in the Meeting of Styles World Meet in Wisbeden Germany as part of Built from Skratch Euro Tour. He was awarded "Best Text Writer" for his Jawi-inspired text. He alongside Built from Skratch, and his crew #ProjectBurnerz, went on to collaborate with *scape on a graffiti wall mural in August 2014 so that a dope and credible mark would be left in the most visibly prominent wall in Singapore. Talks of another mural would be scheduled in 5months time.
In 2012, we saw 2 Beatboxers represent Singapore in the Beatbox Battle World Championship held in Berlin. They are Zul Mystroe ( showcase category) & Dharni (battle category). It is also noted that Dharni, who earlier in 2009, was placed 4th in the Beatbox Battle World championship.