Dive into the
subgenres of Rap!!

As hip-hop continues to evolve as a genre, categorizing sub genres by sound or location is becoming a more and more difficult task. However, it's important to be able to identify different types of hip-hop in order to have a full grasp on how it can impact people in different ways.

Boom bap is a reference to a heavy kick drum “boom” followed by the crisp “bap” of a snare, usually at a moderate tempo and mixed so high it’s almost impossible to listen without bobbing your head. In the early days, you could fairly claim all hip-hop music was boom bap, even if the term didn’t enter into general circulation until T La Rock’s ad-libbed outro on It’s Yours in 1984. The sound it describes was at the heart of hip-hop – from the earliest breakbeats through the sampling innovations of Marley Marl to the original golden era of New York rap music when the likes of DJ Premier, Large Professor and Pete Rock were making heads snap with classic boom bap.

From humble beginnings, trap has risen over the past decade to dominate hip-hop and a lot of contemporary pop music, with everyone from 2 Chainz and Migos to Selena Gomez and Ariana Grande getting paid off of the trap sound.
Conceptually, trap’s roots are usually traced to ‘80s and ‘90s Atlanta slang for a house used to sell drugs, as heard incidentally on records as far back as Kilo Mafia’s Keep On Rolling in 1991. Trap didn’t emerge as a rap style worthy concept of its own until T.I.’s Trap Muzik in 2003 and Gucci Mane’s Trap House in 2005. By this point, it was also starting to take shape musically as a synthesis of most every other southern rap form to date, a glorious clash of the queasy droning intensity of Three 6 Mafia and DJ Screw with the inhumanly agitated hi-hat rattlings of Mannie Fresh and Shawty Red. But the rise of modern trap really began with producer Lex Luger’s work on Waka Flocka Flame’s monumental 2010 debut album Flockaveli.

At its broadest, conscious hip-hop could refer to any rap considered woke by the standards of its time – from Melle Mel’s visions of urban poverty on Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five’s The Message to J Cole’s musings on addiction in KOD. Most often it’s used to mean rappers whose main focus is raising socio-political awareness. Think KRS–One calling himself ‘The Teacha’ or artists such as Akala, Dead Prez, Talib Kweli and Boots Riley of The Coup being renowned almost as much as activists as they are musicians. More specifically it’s sometimes used as a shorthand for Afrocentric raps which aim to raise black consciousness, from Public Enemy, Paris and X-Clan in the early ‘90s to Kendrick Lamar in the 2010s.

Rap music either made by or about gangsters and those affected by gangsterism. Whether you think gangsta rap is an honest document of street life or an obscene glamourisation of morally dubious lifestyle choices, on sales alone it arguably qualifies as one the most significant hip-hop styles. Though the first hip-hop record explicitly addressing gang life was Schoolly D’s PSK in 1986. But the gangsta rap movement didn’t achieve global notoriety until two years later following the moral panic over NWA’s F**k The Police. By the time NWA architect Dr Dre released his solo debut The Chronic in 1992, the gangsta style had established a dominance which didn’t let up until Kanye’s third album Graduation outsold 50 Cent’s Curtis in a heavily hyped showdown in 2007. Along the way artists such as Snoop Dogg, Tupac, Nas, Raekwon, Jay-Z, Scarface, The Notorious B.I.G. and hundreds of thousands of others established beyond reasonable doubt that you can’t understand modern America, and by extension much of the modern world, without understanding the gangster mentality.

Pop rap, also called pop hip hop, melodic hip hop, or melodic rap, is a genre of music fusing the rhythm-based lyricism of hip hop music with pop music's preference for melodious vocals and catchy tunes. ... The lyrics are often lighthearted, with choruses similar to those heard in pop music.