Chinese reality-TV hip-hop show The Rap of China taps Los Angeles to find its next star and get its mojo back

Li Xingyu is excited. The 20-year-old chemistry student travelled almost 200km (125 miles) from San Diego, California, to downtown Los Angeles, where he is about to do something he hasn’t done before: rap on the helipad of a skyscraper.

Wearing glasses, a backpack and an oversized red sweatshirt, Li takes to the stage. He awkwardly grabs the mic from another contestant before launching into his 50-second rap in Chinese: “Success will come sooner or later/ Music is my baby/ While I’m still young and ambitious/ I’ll chase my dream no matter what/ I work this hard, just to draw your attention.”

Li is among 50 people invited to try out for the next season of The Rap of China, one of the country’s most popular reality TV shows. “In the US, it’s way harder. There are a lot of people who are trying to become a famous rap star,” says Li, a University of San Diego student who grew up in Guangzhou, southern China. “You still have a lot of room to become one of the greatest in Chinese.”

When The Rap of China launched in 2017, it pushed music that was largely underground in China into the mainstream. Now producers are turning to Los Angeles and other cities to find fresh talent at a time when the programme appears to be losing some cachet at home. Following the global success of K-pop, they are hoping to build an international audience for the show.

“Over here, you are closer to hip-hop culture, so you are discovering something that is a little more pioneering,” says Chen Wei, executive producer of The Rap of China. “We really love to bring rappers from here to China to have the talents communicate and collaborate with each other. Hopefully that will bring a newer energy.”