Nepalese hip-hop
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Nepalese hip hop music ("NEPHOP") is a blend of Nepalese traditional music, western popular music, with lyrics that are usually altruistic and depicting the present Nepalese political and economic situation. However there are few others who in contrast choose to write about wealth, power and other factors which are a common scene with hip hop music in the West.
History
Hiphop in Nepal started getting popular around the 90's with Snoop Dogg and Eminem as one of the first western artists introduced in Nepal through MTV, Channel V etc. Around 2002–2003 Nepalese rap was commercialised for the first time in Nepal by rappers such as NSK and Girish & Pranil. However the Nepalese hip hop market had not reached that large audience to compete with the western rappers who were winning over the Nepalese rappers in their own country. Nepalese Hip hop still had to work through the Nepalese streets to reach an audience that preferred Nepali over English (as lyrics).
In 2003, NYC based underground rapper Aroz started the first Nepalese hiphop website nephop.com (now defunct) which became the pivotal platform to spearhead the Nepalese Underground hiphop movement. The term "Nephop" soon gained worldwide popularity and is being accepted to define Nepalese Hiphop in general. In 2004, Aroz released his first underground single "Chudaina", produced by pioneer producer DJ AJ sampling 1974 A.D in nephop.com. In 2005, Nepsydaz gained a commercial success as a rap group when they released their version of the same song. Aroz became "the most controversial"[1] rapper to experiment with "Dirty Rap" with his next single "Katti Khep Vannu"[2]. After a massive underground success of his single, he quickly released his next single, "Killin Terraces"[3]. The Germany based New Urban Music Blog [4] in its review hailed "Killing Terraces" as one of the "best" Nepalese political raps.
Around 2003–2004, when commercial artists emerged in the Nepalese hip hop scene with lyrics the urban younger Nepalese generation could relate to. And soon enough Nepalese rappers published their music underground even though the audience were usually Nepalese living in the United States and seldom from Nepal, the underground internet Nepalese hip hop scene was booming.
However with all this publicity of hip hop in Nepal the popularity is running rampant and people who do not have the skill that it takes to be an emcee have steeped up on stage to negatively represent hip hop as an impetus towards crime. This order has brought a negative remark to hip hop from a lot of Nepalese people.