QUOTE (supernovasp @ Aug 31 2005, 10:07 PM)
QUOTE (moj0e @ Aug 31 2005, 02:05 PM)
yeah hip hop in vietnam is gay.. i havent heard a decent hiphop artist from there yet.
and that one guys hair in the pic is pretty wierd O.o, guy wit the designs on his head.
actually most of the iphop songs you heard are oversea not from Vietnam.
An opinion from a western music connoisseur about Vietnamese pop:
by the way For me, rap is not suited to Vietnamese
07-08-2005
by Matthew Watters
The pop music scene in Viet Nam is still dominated by divas who equate good singing with tired, Celine Dion-style ballads. Beloved singers like Phuong Thanh have overpowering voices and melodramatic styles that threaten to trap Vietnamese pop music perpetually in the land of cheese. There is, however, a generation of young pop singers who are making a lighter style of pop music that cuts against the dominant trend.
The battle between pop music that’s popular and pop music that’s good is waged everywhere. In the English-speaking world, for instance, underground pop music referred to as "indie pop" has struggled for years, from Canada to Australia, the US to the UK, to elevate good songwriting, melodies and true feeling over the over-produced, bombastic stuff that is too often promoted by recording companies. It is what has made the music independent, or "indie."
Indie pop also tends to elevate values of "twee" and "cuteness" above values of hip swagger and high style that more popular singers affect. Girl bands and emo bands with nerdy boys in sweaters singing melodic songs influenced by 1960s bands like the Kinks or the Beach Boys are like seeing your little brother or sister form a band, and that’s cooler than someone flaunting overpowering vocal pipes and expensive fashions.
In Japan, for instance, girl bands were the rage of cuteness before the current darker fascination with rock music took over. Around the world, fans appreciate lesser-known singers whose talent or unique qualities are overlooked in favour of flashier, better-financed stars.
The reigning Queen of Vietnamese Pop, for instance, is My Tam, a fine singer with a good taste in material (songs like Uoc Gi are fiendishly catchy). But she has a performing style that baldly apes Jennifer Lopez, and that just isn’t happening.
There have long been signs of life around the fringes of Viet Nam’s pop music scene, however. For years, singers like Hong Nhung have been making fairly adventuresome, if rather sleepy, records, and Tran Thu Ha has an admirable ability to sing difficult material in complex metres, rather like a jazz singer. They’re true musicians.
Of the emerging generation, Ngoc Khue is one of the only singers to develop a personal and idiosyncratic style all her own, one dependant upon odd phrasing and a breathy, bird-like vocal quality rather than the sheer power of her more popular peers like Khanh Linh. Featuring real musicians playing acoustic instruments (and thereby eschewing the Casio sound that has hampered even the best work of singers like Tran Thu Ha), Ngoc Khue’s CD Ben Bo Ao Nha Minh is a trippy and witty little folk rock masterpiece.
Former child star Ngoc Linh is one of the few popular singers who relies more on a simple, melodic, happy presentation than on powerful pipes. By being anti-style, she is actually more hip than other singers. Even her southern accent is apparent in her singing, something many other southern singers attempt to hide, rather like British singers in the 1970s who affected American pronunciation. Similar to Taiwanese or Japanese singers like Aya Matsuura or A-Baw, Ngoc Linh tends to rely on her cuteness for her appeal, but her clear and unaffected voice is subtly effective. Her hit song Hay Hat Len (Let’s Sing) is pure pop, a joyous two-minute burst of melody and the very antithesis of the emotionally overwrought stuff other Vietnamese singers seem to specialize in.
But, as with the happier, livelier pop music scenes of places like Taiwan, Japan, and Thailand, much of the good stuff in Viet Nam is actually evolving within the context of dance music. A world-class dance pop group, as good as anything Thailand (or Europe) has come up with, is Trio 666, a group of two gorgeous and talented sisters who seem to be perpetually rotating one of their friends in and out of the group’s third slot. Trio’s mix of close, slighly akilter harmonies and oddball melodies, linked to rock-inflected dance tracks and performed along with hiply choreographed and tightly-performed dance moves, make them a truly unique article in the creative wasteland of Vietnamese pop. Trio 666 are cool and slick where other Vietnamese acts are amateurish, but their music is suprising and unpredictable. Only marginally popular when they ought to be huge, Trio 666 is the only act in Viet Nam that I could see rising to popularity in foreign music markets like Korea, Japan, and Europe. (Check out Radio Buon or Cu Vui Len for tracks that could have clicked big-time on MTV Europe.)
More popular but less original, in seemingly inverse proportions, are Mat Ngoc, three girls with decent voices but execrable dancing skills whose most recent tracks (and amusingly weird video clips) are obviously influenced by Jolin’s work with Jay Chou in Taiwan. Not a bad influence, but still demonstrating a lack of originality. An offshoot group called HAT make admirably credible use of hip-hop flourishes and humourous backing vocals by a very fat MC. Their peppy new song Taxi is fine pop, but most of their other music is pretty pallid stuff.
May Trang, is a similar group with a longer history: four young women who appeal to teenage fans more for their hairstyles and fashion than for their music. They get points, however, for a couple of hilariously self-deprecating video clips.
A HCMCity-based duo called Techno, featuring the boyish singer Ky Phuong paired with the sultry Thuy Uyen, are perhaps the finest purveyors of pure dance pop in Viet Nam. Ky Phuong, in particular, with a distinctive but unaffected singing style and dance moves that would do Michael Jackson proud, is, in fact, a real star, Viet Nam’s coolest male singer. Compare him to trendy but overbaked pretty-boy warblers like Duy Manh and you’ll wonder why he isn’t bigger. Indeed, it’s hard to find any male pop singers in Viet Nam who deviate from the painfully unhip mould of leisure-suited crooners, so discovering Phuong is a treat.
In pop music, in the end it’s all about what you get down on record. I have previously tended to dismiss the work of singer Doan Trang, for instance, as tired Ricky Martin retreads, and, on her CDs, you can frequently hear the strain in her voice. She’s a beautiful performer, but is she really much of a singer?
Her newly released CD, Socola, gives the resounding answer: yes. Expertly produced (and, odd for Viet Nam, a well-mastered disc, as well), Socola beautifully mixes hip-hop, electronica, and pop, and shows Doan Trang in command of her vocal skills. Could Doan Trang actually become the Bjork of Viet Nam? You’d think so after hearing songs like the rock-electronica confection Toc Hat, or the title track that walks a dizzying high wire above latin pop, reggae and hip-hop, threatening to become self-parody but emerging as pure self-confidence. Socola is one of the best new pop records to come out of Viet Nam and marks Doan Trang as the real deal.
Hopefully as they get more exposure to professional international hip hop artists they'll start to improve.
The only song I think is okay is Trống Vắng. I don't consider any of the songs written by Sĩ Đan to be rock even though he labels them as rock. They're sooo not rock 
