An underground rock group combining traditional Chinese folk music with rock, Slap (耳光乐队) was founded in 1998 in Baoding, Hebei province. As the Chinese title of this song suggests (让牛逼的), the lyrics might take delight in gutteral humor. But they're also quite erudite in the way they reference Chinese myth and idioms, and that's one reason the band has become a mainstay on the music festival circuit where its shows are perhaps surprisingly considered family-friendly affairs.
On a side note, we've actually wanted to cover this song for a long time, and not because of the vulgarity. What makes 让牛逼的 special is that it's probably the most highbrow, lowbrow Chinese song we've ever heard. If you can't pick up on the layered meanings from the audio alone, be sure to view our manually annotated transcript of the lyrics. We've added commentary in the notes fields explaining the double entendres in the more difficult passages, so be sure to enable the notes field in your popups if you haven't yet.
Tip: there's currently a
single copy of this song available via Baidu's MP3 search. Grab it while you have the opportunity, since the audio quality is better than you'll get in the live recording captured above.