Singapore Takes the ‘Bad’ Rap: A State-Produced Music Video Goes ‘Viral’

Abstract

Rap in Singapore has been received as a Western genre valued for its associations with ‘coolness’. This was the case in a 2007 controversy involving a music video produced by the Media Development Authority (MDA), the state governing body for print, film, music, television and web publications. Starring somewhat awkward-looking civil servants, the video used rap to articulate media policy. The result was produced for small circulation but eventually made its way to YouTube as a ‘viral’ phenomenon. Conflicting reactions to its expensive but amateur production values—from embarrassment to patriotic endorsement and politically inverted celebration—reflect a consciousness among Singaporeans who have learnt to laugh at themselves as well as at the state in recent years. This paper analyses the MDA video and its fall-out, studying popular culture, power and representation in one of its quirkier forms. Interactions between music, moving image, new media and propaganda are explored in relation to context, re-signification, parody and kitsch. Ironic to the MDA's mandate, I suggest that a misunderstanding of its self-promoted platforms has opened up situations of disjunctured performance play. The dramatically different values that performance codes signify in different contexts have led to multiple and subverted responses. These are seen in linear-time reactions as well as a constant maintenance of dynamic cultural feedback engineered by the convergence of micro and macro media worlds on the internet.

Keywords:

• Rap
• Music Videos
• Singapore
• The State
• Propaganda
• Internet
• New Media
• Kitsch

Notes

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjLw28UVWEU (last accessed 9 May 2008).

2. Alfred Siew, ‘Yo, check it out, MDA's bringin’ down the house!’, The Straits Times, 24 November 2007, H5.

3. Patrick Frater, Variety Magazine, 10 December 2007. Available online at http://www.varietyasiaonline.com/content/view/5112/53/ (last accessed 9 May 2008).

4. http://digital.asiaone.com/Digital/News/Story/A1Story20071127-38663.html (last accessed 9 May 2008).

5. Alfred Siew, ‘Yo, check it out, MDA's bringin’ down the house!’, The Straits Times, 24 November 2007, H5.

6. Cassandra Tay, ‘MDA amazed by video interest’, The New Paper, 1 December 2007, 40.

7. An embedded link reportedly appeared on The Guardian's website around the time of controversy (The Straits Times, 28 November 2007).

8. http://www.mda.gov.sg/wms.www/aboutus.aspx (last accessed 9 May 2008).

9. http://www.mda.gov.sg/wms.www/aboutus.aspx (last accessed 9 May 2008).

10. http://www.mda.gov.sg/wms.www/aboutus.aspx (last accessed 9 May 2008).

11. Eddino Abdul Hadi, Shaan Seth and Boon Chan, ‘Clever video or bad rap?’, The Straits Times, 22 November 2007, L6.

12. Eddino Abdul Hadi, Shaan Seth and Boon Chan, ‘Clever video or bad rap?’, The Straits Times, 22 November 2007, L6.

13. Kenneth James, ‘MDA's creative annual report: It's a rap!’, Business Times, 19 November 2007, 36.

14. http://youtube.com/comment_servlet?all_comments&v=qjLw28UVWEU&fromurl=/watch%3Fv%3DqjLw28UVWEU%26feature%3Drelated (last accessed 9 May 2008).

15. http://youtube.com/comment_servlet?all_comments&v=XUYiAj1jqFI&fromurl=/watch%3Fv%3DXUYiAj1jqFI%26feature%3Drelated (last accessed 9 May 2008).

16. Eddino Abdul Hadi, Shaan Seth and Boon Chan, ‘Clever video or bad rap?’, The Straits Times, 22 November 2007, L6.

17. Cassandra Tay, ‘MDA amazed by video interest’, The New Paper, 1 December 2007, 40.

18. http://gssq.blogspot.com/2007/11/sing-along-to-mda-senior-management-rap.html (last accessed 23 January 2009).

19. http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZnydK0phSqM (last accessed 9 May 2008).

20. Singlish is a term given to an eclectic version of English spoken in Singapore. It fuses words, singsong accents and grammatical tendencies from various Chinese dialects and Southeast Asian languages such as Malay.

21. ‘Stacking’ is a street term originating in African-American inner city communities for hand actions and gestures choreographed to performances of rap, or associated with inner-city gang sign language signals.

22. A portmanteau word for ‘Mandarin pop’, or a popular music genre in Asia comprising sentimental songs—largely ballads—featuring simple harmonies, with lyrics in Mandarin.

23. http://youtube.com/watch?v=_OPsfAhXUSE (last accessed 9 May 2008).

24. Interview, 20 December 2007, Singapore (name has been changed at request of interviewee).

25. Interview, 20 December 2007, Singapore (name has been changed at request of interviewee).

26. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra7xt9eLLIk (last accessed 9 May 2008).

27. The use of Mandarin is the result of the government promoting Mandarin as the standard language of use (after English) among Han communities in Singapore so as to minimise the threat of inter-clan tensions.

28. Email interview, 15 April 2008.

29. http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3228273,00.html (last accessed 8 October 2008).

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31. http://www.mrbrown.com/blog/2006/10/you_down_wit_yo.html (last accessed 9 May 2008).

32. Interview, 21 December 2007, Singapore (name has been changed at request of interviewee). Getai is a southern Chinese genre, sung during the annual Ghost Festival commemorating the opening of the Gates of Hell in accordance with Tao-Buddhist beliefs. This genre features Hokkien lyrics and a trembly vocal style borrowed from sentimental Japanese and Taiwanese ballads whose roots date to the 1980s. During the outbreak of the MDA viral video, getai had made a comeback as the subject of a popular film, 881, directed by Royston Tan.

33. Interview, 21 December 2007, Singapore.

34. http://laozhabor.blogspot.com/2007/04/laozhabors-rap.html (last accessed 9 May 2008).

35. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbG5loPfLMo (last accessed 9 May 2008).

36. This subject was first explored in Tan 2007.

37. Email interview, 15 April 2008.

38. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xEzGIuY7kw (last accessed 9 May 2008).

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45. http://www.youtube.com/comment_servlet?all_comments&v=qjLw28UVWEU&fromurl=/watch%3Fv%3DqjLw28UVWEU (last accessed 9 May 2008).

46. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JdfPl_TYHo (last accessed 9 May 2008).

47. Name has been changed at the request of the interviewee.

48. Interview, 26 December 2007, Singapore.

49. Interview, 26 December 2007, Singapore.

50. Email interview, 16 April 2008 (name has been changed at the request of the interviewee).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shzr Ee Tan

Shzr Ee Tan is a British Academy postdoctoral fellow in the Music Department at Royal Holloway (University of London), researching new media cultures of the Chinese diaspora. She completed her PhD in Amis Aboriginal song of Taiwan at the School of Oriental and African Studies