The SHN website was the major institution promoting Shanghai Rap. It provided a platform for rappers to upload their work and hosted the most complete collection of Shanghai rap MP3s and lyrics for public download. Besides, one of the website’s highly featured BBS forums was entitled “Shanghai Rap.” According to the lead singer of the band Poom Poom, Robin Shi Lifeng, almost every one of their songs was well received by the fans on that forum, and this gave him and the band much confidence and motivation. Besides online activities, the website organized many offline hip-hop parties in local bars and invited rappers to perform at member-only parties. For instance, nearly 700 people attended the “Shanghai Hip-Hop” party in the Fusion Club in 2004. The website’s avid promotion of Shanghai rap culminated when it co-produced with Sony-BMG the first (and so far only) so-called Shanghai rap album in 2005, Say What You Gotta Say.
Shanghai rap, characterized by the rhythmic patois of Shanghai Wu, was probably the most prolific of all the dialect raps. During its heyday, largely from 2004 to 2006, over twenty rap bands created roughly sixty Shanghai rap songs. Moreover, although most rappers in other dialects were physically based in their home cities, although they enjoyed a global fan base, a considerable number of Shanghai rappers resided, or had resided, overseas. For example, around 2004–2006, Mild Wild Child (MWC) resided in the U.S. city of Seattle, and Lil Yining in Germany. Little Lion, or the former MC Tang, one of the earliest rappers in China, spent his middle school and college years in the United States before forming the duo Hi-Bomb Band in Shanghai in 2001. Gintonic, the key member of the band 201 Crew, spent many years in Japan before returning to Shanghai in 2004.
Songs hosted on the SHN website:
“爱上一个不回家的人/Home again without you” (2004)
“99次恋爱爱上上海/99Love“(2007)