What is Underground Culture

In 2017, an online reality show single-handedly ignited China's passion for hip hop, garnering more than 2.5 billion views and ensuring stardom for its contestants. Prior to this, Chinese hip-hop culture was only an “underground culture”; a small number of people sang in subway stations, not in mainstream media or culture. Based on research into the concept of “post-subculture” and the Birmingham school's theory of youth subcultures, this research takes the TV music show The Rap of China as an exemplary case study and explores how media companies make use of power emerging from fandom to “break the rules” of the traditions of mainstream culture in China. Through online observations of hip-hop songs and artists as well as interviews of hip-hop fans, this research explores the identities constructed in the age of consumerism and how new hip-hop generation fans perceive hip-hop culture.