Melodigging logoMelodigging name
rave funk

Rave Funk

Brazil · 2020s
DancingIntenseHappyEpicDark

Your digging level

For this genre
0/8
🏆
Sign in, then listen to this genre to level up

Description

Rave funk is a contemporary Brazilian club style that fuses the raw percussion, call‑and‑response vocals, and gritty bass of funk carioca with the supersaws, hoover stabs, white‑noise risers, and big‑room drops of EDM and rave.

Typically sitting between 140–150 BPM (often at the Brazilian "150 BPM" pace), it uses the tamborzão or mandelão drum feel under festival‑scale synth builds and DJ‑friendly drops. The result is a high‑impact, dance‑floor sound that keeps the street energy of funk while adopting the dramatic structures of modern rave.


Sources: Spotify, Wikipedia, Discogs, Rate Your Music, MusicBrainz, and other online sources

History

Roots (1990s–2010s)

Rave funk grows out of funk carioca (baile funk), itself rooted in Miami bass and electro but localized in Rio’s bailes with the tamborzão groove, tough MC chants, and heavy 808s. Through the 2010s, Brazilian EDM acts and global bass producers increasingly folded funk rhythms into festival music, laying the groundwork for a more rave‑oriented hybrid.

Festival Convergence (late 2010s–early 2020s)

As big‑room house and EDM rose across Brazil, DJs began arranging funk beats with rave architecture—dramatic builds, supersaw leads, and crowd‑pleasing drops. Parallel scenes like mandelão (darker, slower, bass‑heavy funk) and the 150 BPM wave pushed the tempo and intensity, making the crossover with festival sonics feel natural.

Breakout and Naming (2020s)

By the early 2020s the blend coalesced: street MCs and funk producers collaborated with EDM headliners, while pop crossovers brought the sound to international stages. High‑octane, DJ‑tool edits, chant‑driven hooks, and rave stabs became hallmarks, and the term “rave funk” gained currency to describe this festival‑ready strain of Brazilian funk.

How to make a track in this genre

Tempo and Groove
•   Aim for 140–150 BPM; 150 BPM is common for maximum energy. •   Use a funk carioca foundation (tamborzão) or the heavier, sparse mandelão pulse. Keep swing and syncopation central.
Drums and Percussion
•   Layer a punchy, tuned 808 kick with crisp claps/snares; accent off‑beats and ghost notes for a rolling feel. •   Spice the grid with Brazilian percussion one‑shots (agogô, tamborim, cuíca) and crowd shouts.
Bass and Low End
•   Combine sub‑heavy 808 lines with short, gritty mid‑bass shots for impact at the drop. •   Sidechain the bass aggressively to the kick for a pumping, festival effect.
Synths and Sound Design
•   Rave DNA: supersaw chords, hoover stabs, trance plucks, white‑noise risers, and pitch‑bent impacts. •   Use simple, anthemic motifs that can be chanted; automate filters and reverb for build tension.
Vocals and Topline
•   Short, commanding MC phrases in Portuguese (or chant‑like hooks) work best; call‑and‑response is effective. •   Heavy use of chops, repeats, and crowd‑hype ad‑libs to fill transitions.
Arrangement
•   DJ‑friendly structure: intro (32 bars) → build → drop → break/verse → second build/drop → outro. •   Make A/B drops: Drop 1 establishes groove; Drop 2 adds a new lead, variation, or switch‑up.
Mixing and Mastering
•   Prioritize kick/sub headroom; strong multiband sidechain keeps the drop clean. •   Bright, forward highs for festival translation; limiters set for loud but controlled punch.

Best playlists

The Sound of Rave Funk
The Sound of Rave Funk
Every Noise at Once
Rave Funk
Rave Funk
Chosic
Best user-generated playlists
Best user-generated playlists

Main artists

Top tracks

Locked
Share your favorite track to unlock other users’ top tracks
Influenced by
Funk Carioca
Funk carioca, also known as baile funk, is a high-energy dance music born in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. It blends the booming 808 sub-bass and drum-machine punch of Miami bass and electro with Brazilian street party culture, Portuguese slang, and call-and-response vocals. At its core is the tamborzão rhythm, a syncopated, percussive groove that drives simple, looping beats and chant-like hooks. Lyrics range from playful and explicitly sexual (putaria) to socially conscious narratives and favela pride, and performances are designed for massive neighborhood bailes (street parties). Over time the style has branched into many variants—from melodic radio-friendly hits to darker proibidão—and has influenced global club music while remaining a defining sound of contemporary urban Brazil.
Funk Mandelão
Funk mandelão is a minimalist, hard‑hitting branch of Brazilian funk that crystallized in São Paulo’s street party (fluxo) scene. It emphasizes a stripped, percussive groove with booming sub‑bass, clipped toms and rims, and shouted call‑and‑response vocals that command the dancefloor. Compared with Rio’s tamborzão-driven funk carioca, mandelão tends to sit a bit slower and heavier, favoring hypnotic repetition, stark spaces, and gritty saturation (“estouro”) that translates well on massive, bass-heavy sound systems. Producers often recycle short vocal chops and neighborhood shoutouts, building tension through micro-variations in drums, drops, and crowd‑engaging breaks.
Funk Paulista
Funk paulista is the São Paulo city and metropolitan variation of Brazilian funk that crystallized in the early 2010s. It preserves the Miami-bass-rooted drum programming and MC-driven call‑and‑response of funk carioca, but emphasizes punchy, front‑of‑mix 808s, minimal synth riffs, and hooky, chant‑like refrains tailored for large bailes and YouTube virality. Lyrically, it became widely known through "funk ostentação," which foregrounded aspiration and conspicuous consumption (cars, fashion, nightlife), and later broadened into socially aware "funk consciente" and the darker, heavier club‑facing "funk mandelão."
Edm
EDM (Electronic Dance Music) refers to the mainstream, festival-oriented wave of electronic dance styles that rose to global prominence in the early 2010s. It emphasizes high-energy drops, ear-catching toplines, and crowd-pleasing arrangements designed for large stages and mass audiences. Musically, EDM typically sits around 124–130 BPM with a strong four-on-the-floor kick, wide supersaw leads, bright plucks, and heavily sidechained pads and basses for a pumping feel. Tracks are structured around tension-and-release: intros and builds lead to explosive drops, followed by breakdowns that rebuild energy. Vocals and pop-style songwriting frequently appear, enabling crossover success on radio and streaming platforms.
Electro House
Electro house is a high-energy branch of house music characterized by distorted, buzzing bass leads, crisp four‑on‑the‑floor drums, and dramatic, festival-ready drops. It typically runs around 125–130 BPM, favoring aggressive, sawtooth-based synth timbres, heavy sidechain compression, and big, riff-like hooks over lush chord progressions. Production emphasizes powerful low-end, gritty midrange textures, noise sweeps and risers, and tightly structured builds and breakdowns that set up explosive drops. While rooted in house and electro traditions, its sound design borrows from techno’s intensity and big beat’s punch, resulting in a bold, modern, and club-focused aesthetic.
Big Room House
Big room house is a festival-focused strain of EDM built for massive sound systems and outdoor main stages. It typically runs around 126–132 BPM (most commonly 128), uses four-on-the-floor kick patterns, and features huge, simple lead riffs designed to be instantly memorable to large crowds. A defining trait is the contrast between cinematic, reverb-washed breakdowns and ultra-dry, percussive drops driven by a powerful kick, sub, and a few bold supersaw or horn-like synth stabs. Arrangements lean on dramatic builds with snare rolls, risers, and crowd-hyping vocal chops, culminating in drops that emphasize impact over harmonic complexity.
Rave
Rave is a high-energy electronic dance music style and party culture that crystallized in the late 1980s in the United Kingdom, growing out of acid house nights and warehouse parties. Musically, it emphasizes relentless dance-floor momentum, big breakdowns and drops, bright "rave stabs" and hoover leads, chopped breakbeats or four-on-the-floor kicks, and euphoric vocal samples. While the word "rave" refers to the broader culture of all-night events, the genre tag often points to the early 1990s UK sound sometimes called hardcore rave or breakbeat hardcore: uptempo BPMs, Amen/Think breaks, 808/909 drums, M1 piano riffs, diva hooks, sirens, and airhorns. The mood ranges from ecstatic and communal to dark and intense, with DJ-friendly structures designed for long blends and peak-time rushes.
Bouyon
Bouyon is a high-energy dance music from the Caribbean island of Dominica, built on driving drum-machine grooves, infectious call-and-response hooks, and dense layers of percussion. It fuses the cadence-lypso legacy of Dominica with elements of compas, calypso, and soca, while also borrowing the toasting style and electronic heft of dancehall. Early pioneers translated traditional jing ping rhythms into synthesizers and MIDI rigs, yielding a propulsive, carnival-ready sound marked by booming kick drums, rolling snare lines, cowbells, and bright synth stabs. Lyrics are often shouted or chanted in English and Kwéyòl (Creole), with crowd-hyping commands and local references designed for street parades, fetes, and sound-systems. Modern bouyon frequently pushes faster tempos and bass-forward production, spawning crossover hybrids like bouyon-soca and influencing neighboring island scenes.
Trap Edm
Trap EDM (often called EDM trap) is a fusion of Southern U.S. hip hop trap rhythms with the build–up/drop architecture and sound design of electronic dance music. It typically runs at 140 BPM with a halftime feel (or 70–75 BPM), featuring 808 sub‑bass, crisp snare/clap on the third beat, rapid 1/16 to 1/32 hi‑hat rolls, brass or synth stabs, and big festival‑style drops. Unlike rap-oriented trap, Trap EDM is primarily instrumental and designed for large dance floors and festivals, emphasizing dramatic risers, tension–release dynamics, and heavy low‑end impact.
Bass Music
Bass music is an umbrella category that emphasizes heavy, foregrounded low‑frequency content—whether a booming kick drum, a sub‑bassline, or both. It spans electronic dance music and hip hop lineages from the 1980s onward and is less about one fixed rhythm than about putting the bass spectrum at the center of the mix. Producers typically sculpt the bass using synthesizers, samplers, and drum machines—famously the Roland TR‑808—along with modern soft synths and sub‑enhancement tools. Because it is a broad label, bass music can range from half‑time hip hop swing to four‑on‑the‑floor house pulses and breakbeat frameworks, but in every case the arrangement, sound design, and mix are built to make the low end the driving force.
Funk Rj
Funk RJ is the Rio de Janeiro–rooted branch of Brazilian funk, the sound heard in the "bailes" of the city’s favelas and suburbs. It is built on sub-heavy 808 kick drums, clipped snares, and the signature tamborzão pattern, with shouted hooks and call‑and‑response vocals in Portuguese. Compared to other regional variants, Funk RJ keeps arrangements raw and percussive, prioritizing groove and vocal energy over harmony. MC-led verses celebrate dance, sexuality, neighborhood identity, and social reality, while DJs craft "montagens" (instrumental edits) that loop rhythmic hits, sirens, and vocal chops to drive the dance floor.
Has influenced
No genres found
Challenges
Digger Battle
Let's see who can find the best track in this genre
© 2026 Melodigging
Legal
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.
Buy me a coffee for Melodigging