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Hip Hop
Artists
Hip Hop
Will Smith
2002
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1 album
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4
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Genres
Philly Club Rap
Philly club rap is a high-energy party-rap style from Philadelphia that fuses the city's homegrown club music with contemporary hip hop flows. It typically runs at 135–145 BPM and foregrounds stomping, syncopated kick patterns, chopped vocal shouts, and sparse, percussive arrangements designed for dance. Compared with closely related Jersey club rap, the Philly variant is often rougher and more percussion-led, leaving open space for dancers and crowd call-and-response. Hooks tend to be shouted, chant-like refrains built around local dance moves (the Shake, the Rock, the Bop), while verses switch between clipped, staccato bars and breathless hype-man cadences.
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Indian Indie
Indian indie is the umbrella for independent, non-film music made in India across languages such as Hindi, English, and numerous regional tongues. It is defined more by its DIY production and artist-led release model than by a single sound. Musically, it spans indie pop and rock, folk-fusion, singer‑songwriter ballads, dream‑pop/shoegaze textures, and electronic‑leaning productions. Artists often blend Western harmony and song forms with raga‑tinged melodies, Indian rhythmic feels, and occasional use of traditional instruments like tabla, bansuri, or sitar. The scene grew rapidly with college festivals, small venues, and digital platforms (YouTube, streaming services, Bandcamp), plus boutique labels and festivals such as NH7 Weekender that created national visibility. Lyrically, it tends to be intimate and contemporary—touching on romance, urban life, identity, and nostalgia—while maintaining accessible hooks and warm, organic sonics.
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Indie Pop Rap
Indie pop rap blends the melodic hooks and DIY aesthetic of indie pop with conversational, often introspective rap delivery. The production favors warm, guitar- or synth-led beats, understated drums, and lo‑fi textures over bombastic trap maximalism. Lyrically, it leans personal and relatable—relationships, coming of age, mental health, and day-to-day vignettes—delivered in a half-sung, half-rapped style. The sound was shaped by bedroom producers and the streaming era, where low-stakes, catchy songs with intimate vocals thrive on playlists and social media.
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Pop Urbaine
Pop urbaine is a French mainstream pop style that blends contemporary R&B, hip hop, Afrobeats, dancehall, zouk, raï, and reggaeton with chart‑friendly songwriting. It emphasizes melodic hooks, mid‑tempo grooves, and sleek vocal production (often with Auto‑Tune) while foregrounding everyday, romantic, and nightlife themes in colloquial French. Rhythmically it favors syncopated Afro‑Caribbean patterns, sparse but bouncy 808 drums, and light guitar or synth plucks, creating a buoyant, danceable feel without the aggressiveness of club music. Vocals typically alternate between sung refrains and rap‑influenced verses, with catchy refrains designed for streaming and social media virality. The genre became a defining sound of French popular culture in the late 2010s, driven by a new generation of Francophone artists with diasporic roots who globalized French pop while keeping its language and local slang at the center.
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Reparto
Reparto is a contemporary Cuban urban dance genre that grew out of Havana’s neighborhood (“el reparto”) party circuits. It is built for high-energy street dancing, emphasizing syncopated, loop-based rhythms, shouted hooks, and a raw, percussive low-end that often feels closer to club-ready reggaeton than to traditional Cuban pop. A distinctive trait is the incorporation of Cuban music elements—especially salsa-derived rhythmic language and, in many productions, salsa-like guitar picking patterns that add a bright, montuno-adjacent drive over modern drum programming. Vocals typically alternate between rap-style delivery, call-and-response chants, and catchy repeated slogans designed for crowd participation.
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The Wave
The Wave is a loosely defined cluster of American post-hardcore/emo bands that surged in the early 2010s as emo-pop’s mainstream moment faded. The name was a tongue‑in‑cheek scene tag that stuck in press coverage, but it points to a real overlap in sound, ethos, and touring networks. Musically, The Wave fuses the urgency of 1990s post‑hardcore and screamo with confessional, literate lyric writing associated with emo. Expect shouted or half‑sung/half‑spoken vocals, dynamic quiet‑loud builds, intricate but driving drums, and guitar textures that shift between glassy clean arpeggios and overdriven, emotive climaxes. The songs often emphasize catharsis, narrative detail, and community-minded DIY presentation.
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8d
8D (often styled “8D Audio”) is not a traditional genre but a headphone‑centric production approach where a finished song is reprocessed with fast, automated spatial panning and head‑related transfer function (HRTF) filtering to simulate 360‑degree movement around the listener. Despite the name, there are no actual "eight dimensions." The appeal comes from psychoacoustic tricks—continuous circular or figure‑eight panning, binaural/ambisonic processing, Doppler‑like EQ changes, and reverb tails—that create the illusion that sounds orbit your head. The effect became a viral format on streaming platforms and video sites in the late 2010s, commonly applied to pop, lo‑fi, and chill tracks to make “immersive” headphone versions. Because 8D is an effect rather than a compositional style, its repertoire largely consists of fan/producer remixes of pre‑existing music, plus original ambient and chill pieces designed specifically for the "moving sound" experience.
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Black Americana
Black Americana is a contemporary umbrella genre that centers Black artists within the traditions of Americana (roots-based U.S. music such as folk, country, blues, gospel, and soul). It often blends acoustic storytelling and roots instrumentation with Black musical lineages, highlighting themes of migration, labor, faith, resilience, love, and social justice. Rather than a single fixed sound, it is a scene and framing that reconnects “Americana” to its multiracial roots while pushing the style forward with modern production, R&B/soul phrasing, and genre-crossing songwriting.
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Deep Funk Ostentacao
Deep funk ostentação is a moody, late‑night variant of São Paulo’s funk ostentação, emphasizing deeper sub‑bass, sparse percussion, and atmospheric pads while retaining the genre’s themes of luxury, status, and upward mobility. Compared with the brighter, EDM‑leaning hits of ostentação in the early 2010s, the “deep” approach strips arrangements down to hypnotic tamborzão grooves, 808 low‑end, and minimal, minor‑key synth motifs. Vocals often sit closer to the beat, with autotune and chant‑like hooks, but the lyrical focus remains on conspicuous consumption (cars, brands, nightlife) filtered through a more introspective, nocturnal aesthetic.
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Dmv Rap
DMV rap is hip hop from the Washington, D.C.–Maryland–Virginia region distinguished by a clipped, deadpan "punch‑in" delivery, nimble internal rhymes, and hard, minimalist trap production. Beats tend to be fast and skeletal—808s, tight snares, and rattling hi‑hats under eerie, bell or synth motifs—leaving space for bar‑by‑bar punch‑ins, ad‑libs, and quotable one‑liners. Lyrically it mixes gritty street reportage with hyperlocal references (PG County, Southeast D.C., NoVA, Metro lines) and distinct regional slang, while its crowd‑moving energy traces back to D.C.’s go‑go "crank" ethos.
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Musica Urbana Oaxaquena
Musica urbana oaxaqueña (Oaxacan urban music) is a contemporary, grassroots blend of Latin urban styles—reggaeton, Latin trap, dancehall and hip‑hop—with regional sounds and languages from the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. It often mixes Spanish with Indigenous languages such as Zapotec, Mixtec, Mixe, Mazatec, and Triqui, foregrounding local identity alongside global club aesthetics. Production typically marries dembow or halftime trap drums with timbres and melodic turns inspired by Oaxacan brass band traditions (bandas de viento), chilena costeña (6/8–3/4 hemiola swing), son istmeño motifs, and cumbia keyboards or guitars. Lyrically, it ranges from party and romance to migration, pride, and community narratives tied to fiestas patronales, tequio (communal work), and Oaxacan diasporic life.
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Retro Pop
Retro pop is contemporary pop music that deliberately evokes the sound, songwriting, and studio aesthetics of earlier eras—most commonly the late 1970s and 1980s, but also the 1960s girl‑group era, 1970s disco, soft rock, and early 1990s pop-R&B. Hallmarks include analog-leaning synth textures, danceable four-on-the-floor or funky backbeats, prominent basslines, glossy chorus-heavy guitars, gated-reverb drums, stacked background vocals, and big, unforgettable hooks. While its palette looks backward, retro pop uses modern production workflows—tight low-end, streaming-friendly loudness, and contemporary vocal processing—so it feels nostalgic yet current. Lyrically, retro pop often pairs timeless pop themes (romance, yearning, nightlife, bittersweet memories) with sleek, neon-tinged imagery and cinematic nostalgia, bridging classic pop sensibilities with today’s chart expectations.
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Lo Star
Lo star is a streaming-era umbrella tag used to group under-the-radar, low-profile artists who sit on the fringes of indie, alternative, DIY pop, and related scenes. Rather than denoting a single, tightly defined musical vocabulary, it marks a discovery space of self-produced or small-label projects with modest audiences, genre-fluid aesthetics, and a distinctly DIY approach to recording and release. Expect intimate vocals, inexpensive or home-studio production, hybrid acoustic/electronic textures, and songwriting that favors personal storytelling and immediacy over polish. Because it functions as a curatorial category for emerging or niche acts, the sonic palette spans indie rock and folk-pop to bedroom pop and lo-fi electronic, unified by scale, ethos, and distribution more than by strict musical rules.
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Sky Room
Sky room is a streaming-era microgenre of airy, pastel-hued alt‑pop and indie R&B that sits between bedroom pop and chill electronic music. It emphasizes soft, close-miked vocals, spacious reverbs, light trap‑influenced percussion, and gentle synth or clean guitar textures. The overall sound is weightless and daydreamy—designed as much for background listening as for late‑night introspection. Lyrically, sky room leans toward intimate, confessional themes—quiet anxieties, tender romance, and coming‑of‑age self-reflection—conveyed with minimalist phrasing and catchy, understated hooks.
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Pop Rap
Pop rap blends the rhythmic vocal delivery and beat-centric production of hip hop with the catchy hooks, polished structures, and radio-friendly sensibilities of pop music. It typically features melodic choruses (often sung), accessible themes, and mid-tempo grooves designed for mass appeal. Production prioritizes clean, bright sonics, simple harmonic progressions, and memorable top-line melodies, while verses keep to clear, punchy flows that are easy for broad audiences to follow. Because it sits between two commercial powerhouses—pop and hip hop—pop rap has frequently served as a gateway for mainstream listeners to explore rap, while giving hip hop artists a framework to cross over to pop charts.
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Golden Age Hip Hop
Golden age hip hop is the label commonly given to mainstream hip hop created from the mid/late 1980s through the early-to-mid 1990s, especially by artists from the New York metropolitan area. It is known for dense sample-based production, hard-hitting drum programming, and highly developed lyricism, including complex rhyme schemes, storytelling, battle rap, and socially conscious writing. The era is often described as unusually diverse and innovative, with producers sampling widely from funk, soul, jazz, rock, and spoken-word records, and with artists exploring themes ranging from party and braggadocio to politics and everyday urban life.
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Boom Bap
Boom bap is a foundational East Coast hip hop style defined by hard, punchy drums—“boom” for the kick and “bap” for the snare—laid under sample-based loops from jazz, soul, and funk records. It typically runs around 85–96 BPM, favors gritty, minimally processed textures (often associated with SP‑1200 and early Akai MPC samplers), and foregrounds lyrical skill: multisyllabic rhyme schemes, internal rhymes, storytelling, street reportage, and battle bars. DJ techniques such as scratching and cut‑choruses are common, and arrangements emphasize head‑nod grooves, sparse basslines, and tight bar structures that give MCs room to “sit in the pocket.”
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Hip Hop
Hip hop is a cultural and musical movement that emerged from Black, Latino, and Caribbean communities, centering around rapping (MCing), DJing/turntablism, sampling-based production, and rhythmic speech over beats. It prioritizes groove, wordplay, and storytelling, often reflecting the social realities of urban life. Musically, hip hop is built on drum-centric rhythms (from breakbeats to 808 patterns), looped samples, and bass-forward mixes. Lyrically, it ranges from party anthems and braggadocio to political commentary and intricate poetic forms, with flow, cadence, and rhyme density as core expressive tools. Beyond music, hip hop encompasses a broader culture, historically intertwined with graffiti, b-boying/b-girling (breakdance), fashion, and street entrepreneurship, making it both an art form and a global social language.
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Contemporary R&b
Contemporary R&B is a popular music genre that evolved from rhythm and blues and soul in the late 1970s, largely among African‑American musicians. It blends traditional R&B vocal stylings with elements of pop, funk, hip hop, and electronic music. The style is marked by soulful, passionate and often melismatic lead vocals; lush, smooth, frequently synthesized production; and a groove-first sensibility that can range from slow jams to club‑ready mid‑tempos. Since the 2010s, the incorporation of pop and electronic textures and production techniques has driven strands like electro‑R&B and helped expand the sound on global charts.
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East Coast Hip Hop
East Coast hip hop is a regional style of hip hop that emerged in New York City and the surrounding Northeastern United States. It is characterized by complex lyricism, dense rhyme schemes, gritty urban storytelling, and sample-heavy production that draws from funk, soul, and jazz records. Rhythmically, the sound is often associated with "boom-bap" drum patterns—hard-hitting kicks and crisp snares at moderate tempos—alongside chopped breakbeats, basslines, and DJ techniques such as scratching. The approach places the MC’s voice, cadence, and wordplay at the center, while the producer crafts a textured, crate-dug backdrop. Culturally, East Coast hip hop foregrounds authenticity, social commentary, and competitive MCing, while its crews and collectives (from Juice Crew to Native Tongues and Wu-Tang Clan) helped define hip hop’s golden age and set standards for lyrical excellence and sample-based beatmaking.
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Pop
Pop is a broad, hook-driven style of popular music designed for wide appeal. It emphasizes memorable melodies, concise song structures, polished vocals, and production intended for radio, charts, and mass media. While pop continually absorbs elements from other styles, its core remains singable choruses, accessible harmonies, and rhythmic clarity. Typical forms include verse–pre-chorus–chorus, frequent use of bridges and middle-eights, and ear-catching intros and outros. Pop is not defined by a single instrumentation. It flexibly incorporates acoustic and electric instruments, drum machines, synthesizers, and increasingly digital production techniques, always in service of the song and the hook.
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Show all 21 genres
Albums
2002
3
/5
Greatest Hits
DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
Golden Age Hip Hop
Hip Hop
Pop
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JAŸ-Z
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50 Cent
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Mac Miller
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Frat Rap
Boom Bap
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Snoop Dogg
G-Funk
Gangsta Rap
Hip Hop
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Melodding was created as a tribute to
Every Noise at Once
, which inspired us to help curious minds keep digging into music's ever-evolving genres.