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Red Bull Taiwan helps ease boredom with ‘I Got Bars’ 2021

Taiwanese rappers are dropping bars during lockdown

LiFTED | Roger Yiu & Marcus Aurelius | 14 Jun 2021


A semi-lockdown was imposed a month ago in Taiwan due to an influx of COVID-19 cases, and many people have been struggling to maintain their sanity because all events, concerts, and nightclubs have been shut down. To ease the boredom of being stuck at home, Red Bull Taiwan revamped its popular ‘I Got Bars’ event into a home edition and opened it up to the public for the first time.

On May 28, Tipsy Kao gave the call out to anyone who was feeling creative while stuck at home to lay some bars on his horn-heavy celebratory beat and upload it to Instagram or YouTube. MCs had four days to cook something up. On June 2, Tipsy was joined by special guests 賴皮Mr. Skin, 大淵MUTA, and ØZI to discuss who they thought were the best.

The response was overwhelmingly amazing as more than 100 rappers uploaded tracks and many of them were exceptional. It's always great to see MCs side by side rapping on the same tracks because then you can compare and contrast a little bit.

At LiFTED, we watched a lot of entries and picked some of our favorites to help pass time during lockdown.

YOUNGLEE

YOUNGLEE came in and stole the show! His version had 大淵MUTA dancing in his seat. Look out for this newcomer who will be up on soon on MTV's The Rappers.

Ill MO

Ill mo from the legendary Tripoets has never met a verse he hasn't ripped down to the ground. He's sounding fresh to death right here.

RNLEE 同理

ØZI was feeling this one hard and so are we. A nice mixture of dope flows and a bit of R&B swag for RNLEE.

JAYRoll

You know how in posse cuts, there's always a really great verse in the middle of the pack. JAYRoll comes in very smooth for his 'I Got Bars' verse for sure.

老夏XIA

老夏XIA comes in with some great bars about Taipei city and gets extra points for his visuals.

FiveWood & PanBeatz

Being different is always good in things like this. FiveWood and PanBeatz from All in One music extend the song and add a little of their own flavor to it to make it special.

Savage.M/馬克

A long-time friend of Red Bull Taiwan, Savage.M/馬克 takes the beat and instead of just freestyling or flexing lyrically, he makes a song, 'I Never Lose,' and it works very well.

T.L 藍子庭

T.L 藍子庭 goes in on 'I Got Bars' with stories about lockdown, playing poker, and getting girls on Tinder. It doesn't get more Hip Hop than that.