Curated category
21st-century music genres
- Jerk (music genre)New York City became the birthplace of Jerk in 2021. Rapper Xaviersobased formed a group called 1c34 that same year. This collective reimagined an older…
- HexDIn 2011, Untranced released a mixtape titled Deleted Seniors. This project featured EDM music mixed with heavy bitcrushing.
- Punk rapPunk rap arrives with a simple, confrontational mission. As one artist put it: "It's what the game needs now; someone who doesn't give a fuck about the rules…
- Rage (music genre)The word rage first appeared in hip-hop through Kid Cudi's Mr. Rager alter ego during the 2010s. Travis Scott later adopted this term and made it a core part…
- DigicoreThe word digicore first appeared in the 2000s as a shorthand for digital hardcore, a distinct electronic music style from that era.
- Nu metalNu metal arrived on the 18th of August 1998, when three albums dropped on the same day: Korn's Follow the Leader, Kid Rock's Devil Without a Cause, and…
- Cloud rapIn 2010, music blogger Walker Chambliss wrote a blog post that introduced the phrase cloud rap to describe the work of Squadda B.
- CrunkcoreCrunkcore arrived in the mid-2000s as one of the stranger collisions in popular music. A microgenre known by at least four names - crunkcore, crunk punk…
- Jerkin'Jerkin' is a street dance culture and hip hop subgenre that rose from urban California in the late 2000s. The music sounded new.
- Punk rockPunk rock arrived in the mid-1970s as a deliberate act of refusal. Ramones drummer Tommy Ramone put it plainly: by 1973, he knew that what was needed was…
- Rap metalRap metal arrived not with a manifesto but with a question nobody had asked yet: what happens when you put a DJ and a shredding guitarist in the same room?
- Rock musicIn 1951, a Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey named Alan Freed began spinning rhythm and blues records for a multi-racial audience, and he is credited with first…
- EmoEmo is a genre of rock music that began as a small, passionate subculture in Washington, D.C., and grew into one of the defining sounds of the early…
- VaporwaveIn August 2010, a cassette tape titled Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1 appeared on the internet under the name Daniel Lopatin.
- HyperpopIn 2013, A. G. Cook launched the record label and art collective known as PC Music in London. This small group of artists laid the groundwork for what would…
- Trap musicTrap music was born out of the Atlanta streets, and its name comes from a specific and brutal place: the trap house, a building where drug deals happen.
- Electronic musicElectronic music is a category so wide it contains multitudes: the eerily bowed theremin of a 1950s science-fiction film, the clicking drum machines behind…
- A cappellaA cappella is the practice of singing without any instrumental accompaniment, and its roots stretch back well before the invention of written music.