By Huo Zhe
Entertainment Correspondent
BEIJING (China Daily Show) — Former president Jiang Zemin has ended months of speculation about his health this week by finally appearing in public to announce his comeback tour.
The celebrated owner of a pair of “awesome” spectacles was wheeled out Monday at the CCP’s Xinhai Revolution centenary party, where he upstaged everyone by announcing the release of his longstanding project: an English-language hip-hop album Jiang has been working for the last four years.
J-Z Reprazents: The Blueprints is an attempt to codify Jiang’s sometimes-baffling political ideology, particularly his Three Represents Theory, into a street language that resonates with today’s youth – as well as simply being a “banging rap album,” said The Source magazine’s China editor, Bo “Jangles” Luo.
“The Party regularly promotes a blend of Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, Hu Jintao’s ‘scientific development’ and even Ice-T Thought. Hell, Hua Guofeng gets more ideological airtime,” Bo observed. “Jiang has long been considered merely a useful idiot and decided to reclaim his rightful place in history the only way he knows how: via hip hop.”
Little is known of the contents of the album, other than a track bootlegged onto Baidu and quickly deleted. But one user who heard the rough cut of album opener “Harmony’s a Bitch” commented that “JZ’s rhymes flow like fermented soy-bean sauce over a sizzling wok of East Coastal city beats.”
For months, speculation has run rife about Jiang’s whereabouts after a Hong Kong broadcaster suggested he had died.
One newspaper even claimed Jiang’s family had sold commercial rights of his image to a domestic fried-chicken firm, who hoped to make Jiang’s trademark cackle as mouth-watering as Colonel Sanders’ smirk.
Now his recent absence from political life can be attributed to Jiang putting the finishing dope touches to The Blueprints in his Macao recording studio.
Due to drop in February 2012, the album has already gone triple-platinum on the mainland, with young Chinese pre-purchasing debut single “Ain’t No Motherfucking Flower Vase” in the millions.
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