On the Record: Remembering Expat Rapper, Jackson Turner

Drew Pittock, Contributing Editor | Jul 26, 2020 2:30 pm | 2 comments | 1574 reads

On the Record is your guide to the past, present, and future of Beijing's music scene. 

Jackson Turner

Name: Jackson Turner (aka Emcee Heretic)

Established: 2014

Record(s): 2 full-length + 1 EP

Label(s): Taihe Music Group, Pantheon Elite Records, Digital Empire Records

Influences: Nas, Otis Redding, Eminem, Big Pun, Sizzla

Stream: Bandcamp, YouTube, Soundcloud

Editor’s Note: Jackson Turner passed away on Jul 19, 2020. Our deepest condolences go out to his family, friends, collaborators, fans, and anyone else who was touched by his music. 

Who is he: For anyone who was hanging around Beijing’s hip-hop scene in the early-00s, Jackson Turner is probably a familiar name. After being estranged from his mother, getting into some trouble as a kid, and witnessing a fair share of violence around his native Brooklyn, the 19-year-old decided it was time to steer his life in a new direction, and thus took advantage of an exchange program between the University of Buffalo in New York – where he was studying at the time – and Capital Normal University. Once he had completed his Chinese language studies, the rapper-turned-scholar enrolled at Peking University, where he pursued a master’s degree in history and philosophy. While he wasn’t in the classroom, however, Turner, aka Emcee Heretic, was busy building up relationships and burning down stages (not literally, of course) all across Beijing.

Despite arriving in the city around 2003, Turner didn’t really enter the local hip-hop scene until 2009, when he started going to underground clubs where he would hang out and free-style with the emcees after their shows were over. This led him to collaborate extensively with Chinese producers and artists such as Liang Weijia – aka Saber –  on the 2018 track “Wolves,” and Lil Andy on 2014’s “How We Ride.” Perhaps more surprising though is the fact that at this point, Turner’s Chinese was so good he was even lending Mandarin lyrics to the songs he was creating with Chinese rappers. Speaking to online magazine, IAMHIPHOP! in 2016, Turner explained, “I can spit written bars in Chinese, but I can’t really freestyle… I’m always concerned though that the songs I’ve written in Chinese are good for a non-native speaker, but that they will seem corny to a Chinese person because I can’t express myself poetically in the same way they can.” Nevertheless, given that so many non-English speaking artists are pressured into kowtowing to Western audiences if they ever want to make it on a global scale, there’s certainly something admirable – not to mention impressive – about Turner flipping that script and singing in the language of his adopted home.

As a self-described “socially conscious” lyricist, Turner would wax poetic on themes of social justice, poverty, violence, and inequity, with beats that borrow from gospel and Americana as much as they do 90s hip-hop.

To see what some of the members of China’s rap community had to say about Turner’s passing, click here.

READ: On the Record: Looking at the Future of Future Orients

Images: emergencyroomagency.com

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Re: On the Record: Remembering Expat Rapper, Jackson Turner
Posted Jul 30, 2020 1:30pm by CatPilgrim
(Reply to a previous comment)

I'm so sorry for your loss. 

vze26m98 wrote:

Greetings- I'm Jackson's father. He was born in 1983, so 37 this past May. At this point we still don't know what happened exactly, but it was some terrible accident. The best information is this account from Oscar, who pulled him out of a pool in Tulum Mexico on 19 July and tried to save his life:

He came on Wednesday to see some Bungalows that my girlfriend rent. He was referred by Rocco a good friend musitian here Tulum. I met him on Wednesday, showed him the room and he agreed to move on Sunday. This Sunday I checked him he was very happy to found a peaceful place, and we were super happy to find a nice person to rent to. I live in one of the nine bungalows at the same place. During Sunday we were eating when he came back from the grocery store 4.30pm we inviting him and he said he was vegetarian, he ate a mango with us. He asked me for a yoga mat and I realized he was doing exercise at his room. During the evening with other visitors they were singing around the fire and doing sweatlodge thing. Everything was looking okay. Around 9.40pm I went to the kitchen and my girlfriend yelled if someone can please check if he was okay, other guest and a kid were in the pool all distancing. I jumped in the pool to moved him and took him out, I asked if anyone know how to do cpr and help, I jumped out of the pool and called 911. They took 26 minutes to arrive. The position he was having when I saw him was: the two hands pointing to the chest both elbows touching the ribs in 45 degrees. Around 10.08pm after the paramedics tried to do electros on him. They couldn't do anything else. Other cops came an interview us, forensic too. They took all their pertenencies, 2 laptops 1 cellphone, his luggage, his passport, and they took him to do Playa del Carmen autopsy around 3am they left and took him. We don't know if he had a stroke, a indigestion, dont know if he was having any condition like epilepsy or even if he knew how to swim or if he was doing meditation atatt the pool. We have a candle and an altar for him here. Yesterday we said a prayer for him. We was already a friend of us, he was already a brother. Please let us know what we can do or help his family to know more or tell us if he was having any condition. To us he seems pretty healthy person. I don't know if the cpr was well conducted or if he spent 1 minute or so under water already, not sure if the fire or sweatlodge changed his blood pressure or something.
FYI the news are posting that he was drunk, I dont think he drinks and there was no alcohol in the fridge, they asked if there were some drugs but they did not found anything at his room, news mention that I am the manager when I was only a neighbor that speaks Spanish, my girlfriend is French so I was the one that took him out and called 911. The picture on the social media are not the real pictures fyi.

There's a web site commemorating Jackson that his mother and step brothers set up here:

 Jackson Turner's Online Memorial & Obituary

Re: On the Record: Remembering Expat Rapper, Jackson Turner
Posted Jul 29, 2020 1:29am by vze26m98

Greetings- I'm Jackson's father. He was born in 1983, so 37 this past May. At this point we still don't know what happened exactly, but it was some terrible accident. The best information is this account from Oscar, who pulled him out of a pool in Tulum Mexico on 19 July and tried to save his life:

He came on Wednesday to see some Bungalows that my girlfriend rent. He was referred by Rocco a good friend musitian here Tulum. I met him on Wednesday, showed him the room and he agreed to move on Sunday. This Sunday I checked him he was very happy to found a peaceful place, and we were super happy to find a nice person to rent to. I live in one of the nine bungalows at the same place. During Sunday we were eating when he came back from the grocery store 4.30pm we inviting him and he said he was vegetarian, he ate a mango with us. He asked me for a yoga mat and I realized he was doing exercise at his room. During the evening with other visitors they were singing around the fire and doing sweatlodge thing. Everything was looking okay. Around 9.40pm I went to the kitchen and my girlfriend yelled if someone can please check if he was okay, other guest and a kid were in the pool all distancing. I jumped in the pool to moved him and took him out, I asked if anyone know how to do cpr and help, I jumped out of the pool and called 911. They took 26 minutes to arrive. The position he was having when I saw him was: the two hands pointing to the chest both elbows touching the ribs in 45 degrees. Around 10.08pm after the paramedics tried to do electros on him. They couldn't do anything else. Other cops came an interview us, forensic too. They took all their pertenencies, 2 laptops 1 cellphone, his luggage, his passport, and they took him to do Playa del Carmen autopsy around 3am they left and took him. We don't know if he had a stroke, a indigestion, dont know if he was having any condition like epilepsy or even if he knew how to swim or if he was doing meditation atatt the pool. We have a candle and an altar for him here. Yesterday we said a prayer for him. We was already a friend of us, he was already a brother. Please let us know what we can do or help his family to know more or tell us if he was having any condition. To us he seems pretty healthy person. I don't know if the cpr was well conducted or if he spent 1 minute or so under water already, not sure if the fire or sweatlodge changed his blood pressure or something.
FYI the news are posting that he was drunk, I dont think he drinks and there was no alcohol in the fridge, they asked if there were some drugs but they did not found anything at his room, news mention that I am the manager when I was only a neighbor that speaks Spanish, my girlfriend is French so I was the one that took him out and called 911. The picture on the social media are not the real pictures fyi.

There's a web site commemorating Jackson that his mother and step brothers set up here:

Jackson Turner's Online Memorial & Obituary