Curated category
Hip-hop 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…
- Internet rapIn 1997, Canibus dropped the track DJ Clue Freestyle and declared he would battle opponents on the net as well as in the flesh.
- Memphis rapMemphis rap emerged in the mid-1980s within the city of Memphis, Tennessee. This regional subgenre began as a response to the dominant hip hop scenes in New…
- DigicoreThe word digicore first appeared in the 2000s as a shorthand for digital hardcore, a distinct electronic music style from that era.
- Jewish hip-hopIn the 1980s, a group called Hip Hop Hoodíos fused Jewish and Latino identities to create music that found support in Latino media.
- Hardcore hip-hopHardcore hip-hop was born in the East Coast hip-hop scene of the 1980s, and its DNA has always been anger, aggression, and confrontation.
- 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.
- Trip hopTrip hop is a genre born in the council estates of Bristol, England, where DJs who grew up on Jamaican dub music began slowing everything down.
- Gangsta rapGangsta rap began its life under a different name: reality rap. That original label tells you something honest about what the genre's founders believed they…
- Hip houseHip house was born at a crossroads: somewhere between a Chicago warehouse and a London recording studio, two of the most vital youth music movements of the…
- Miami bassMiami bass carries two names: the polished one is "Miami bass," but the streets always called it booty music. Born from the historically Black neighborhoods…
- 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?
- Freestyle rapIn the early 1980s, hip hop artists used the word freestyle to describe a written rhyme that had no specific subject matter.
- 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.
- CrunkThe word crunk first appeared in print within a 1972 Dr. Seuss book titled Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!. The author used the phrase Crunk-Car…