China's AI rap “Guo Lai Ren” passes 120 million views, made by 1 creator in 3 to 4 days

Du Fu, the Tang dynasty poet, raps about moving flats in middle age. Su Shi raps about getting laid off at 35. That’s “Guo Lai Ren” (过来人, The OGs), an AI rap video that passed 120 million views across Chinese platforms by 9pm on October 22, 2026, according to 21st Century Business Herald.

One person made it. Wang Kunzhe, a creator from Wuhan, told the paper it took 3 to 4 days of production and a few thousand yuan in tool subscriptions and compute credits.

Here’s where the views came from, as of that evening:

• Douyin: about 75 million.
• WeChat Channels: about 45 million.
• Xiaohongshu: about 3 million.
• Bilibili: about 500,000.
• Weibo: about 150,000.

The South China Morning Post picked it up on October 26 and says it crossed 100 million in under 2 weeks.

Who made Guo Lai Ren, and what did AI do?

Wang spent more than 10 years shooting TV news, promo films and commercials before switching fully to AI work this year. “Guo Lai Ren” is the latest episode of his series in which historical figures take the mic, after 7 earlier ones.

He built every shot on the LibTV canvas and reused the character images from those 7 episodes, which is how the faces stay consistent from shot to shot. The music came from other AI music tools he doesn’t name, cut into the video afterwards.

The lyrics are where he drew the line. Wang says he tried letting AI write them, and it forced rhymes with filler sounds and lost the thread, so he dropped that idea fast.

Instead, the base came from a notes file he has kept for at least 10 years, where he writes down lines as they come to him. AI did the trial and error on rhyme and arrangement. In his words (my translation): “What to write, how to order it and which line stays, I decide.”

Why Guo Lai Ren hit 120 million views: rent, layoffs and the curse of 35

The structure is simple. Du Fu takes the first verse, about still moving house in middle age. Su Shi takes the second, about being laid off at 35 and losing family, and he smiles through it. Liu Bang, the founder of the Han dynasty, takes the third, about starting late and refusing to quit.

Then 7 more figures, including Li Bai, Cao Cao and Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, get a line or 2 each as the track builds to a group chorus.

The “curse of 35” is the hiring bias against workers over 35 in China, and the SCMP lists it among the everyday anxieties the lyrics speak to. The comment sections turned into what Wang calls a tree hollow, a place where strangers post their own stories and comfort each other.

His earlier episodes skewed towards men aged 31 to 40. This one split evenly between men and women, and the age range widened in both directions.

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AI can mass-produce content, but it can't mass-produce resonance and empathy.

How Wang Kunzhe gets paid for Guo Lai Ren and protects it

Right now the money comes from 2 places. He’s a signed first-release creator on Douyin, which pays creator incentives by its own rules, and he’s in LibTV’s creator growth plan, which pays tiered cash rewards and reimburses compute costs.

Brand deals started arriving after the video blew up. He says he’ll take some, but slowly, because a sponsored post that disappoints his audience burns through the account’s goodwill.

On rights, he’s done the boring thing that matters. He has lodged copyright evidence records for all his original works and assets, and he points to the parts a human decided: the lyric base, the style, the structure, and which AI takes made the cut.

That’s the same line a German court drew this month, when it ruled that a songwriter keeps the rights to lyrics she wrote even though her partner made the music with Suno.

So what can you take from it? The AI made “Guo Lai Ren” cheap. A 10-year notes file made it land. Producer Samori Coles is another case of years of craft behind the prompts: he started directing AI music videos after 30 years of making records. If you’re building AI music videos yourself, my AI music video generator roundup covers the tools, and keeping characters consistent is the same problem Wang solved by reusing 7 episodes of artwork.

Wang says the series continues, with more poets already on his list.