East Park Productions

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.”

Conscious hip hop is a lyrical-driven branch of hip hop that foregrounds social commentary, political awareness, community uplift, and personal reflection. Rather than centering on party themes or braggadocio, it emphasizes messages about inequality, identity, justice, and everyday realities. Musically, the style tends to favor boom‑bap rhythms, soulful or jazz-inflected sampling, and stripped, head‑nod grooves that leave space for the words. While the sound palette can range from warm, sample-based beats to modern, cinematic production, the core value remains the same: clear, purposeful storytelling that aims to inform, provoke thought, and inspire change.

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.

Old school hip hop is the earliest commercially recorded era of hip hop, emerging from Bronx block parties in the late 1970s and reaching its peak in the early to mid‑1980s. It centers on DJs isolating and extending the "break" of funk and disco records while MCs deliver party-rocking rhymes, crowd call‑and‑response, and braggadocio over steady 4/4 grooves. The sound is rhythm-first: looped breakbeats, handclaps, simple bass ostinatos, and—by the early 1980s—Roland TR‑808 patterns and rudimentary synthesizer lines, especially on electro-influenced tracks. Lyrically, it ranges from playful party chants to early social commentary. Culturally, it’s inseparable from the four elements—DJing, MCing, b‑boying, and graffiti—and from the DIY energy of park jams and sound-system culture.

R&B (Rhythm and Blues) is a vocal- and groove-centered popular music tradition that blends blues tonality, jazz harmony, and gospel-inflected singing with a steady backbeat. It emphasizes expressive lead vocals, call-and-response, lush harmonies, and danceable rhythms. From its 1940s roots in African American communities to its later evolutions, R&B has continually absorbed and reshaped surrounding sounds—from jump blues and swing in the early days to soul, funk, hip hop, and electronic production in the contemporary era. Today, R&B ranges from intimate, slow-burning ballads to club-ready tracks, all tied together by a focus on feel, melody, and vocal performance.

Underground hip hop is a loosely defined movement within hip hop culture that prioritizes artistic integrity, lyrical depth, and experimental or non-commercial production over mainstream trends. It is often associated with independent labels, DIY distribution, and regional scenes that cultivate distinctive aesthetics and voices. Musically, underground hip hop favors sample-rich, boom-bap or off-kilter drum programming, gritty textures, and unconventional song structures. Lyrically, it emphasizes complex wordplay, social commentary, personal storytelling, and abstract or avant-garde imagery. Culturally, it values community, crate-digging, and innovation, maintaining a skeptical stance toward commercial pressures.

Rap is a vocal music style built on the rhythmic, rhymed, and often improvised spoken delivery of lyrics over a beat. It emphasizes flow, cadence, wordplay, and narrative, and is commonly performed over sampled or programmed drum patterns and loops. Emerging from block parties and sound-system culture in the Bronx, New York City, rap became the core vocal expression of hip hop culture alongside DJing, breakdancing, and graffiti. While it is closely linked to hip hop, rap as a technique and genre has also crossed into pop, rock, electronic, and global regional scenes. Musically, rap favors strong drum grooves (breakbeats, 808 patterns), sparse harmony, and loop-based structures that foreground the MC’s voice. Lyrically, it spans party chants and battle brags to intricate internal rhymes, social commentary, reportage, and autobiography.

Melodic rap is a style of hip hop that prioritizes sung or sing‑rap cadences, tuneful hooks, and emotive toplines over strictly percussive flows. It blends trap‑based drum programming and 808 sub‑bass with pop‑leaning melodies, R&B harmonies, and heavy use of Auto‑Tune as an expressive effect rather than mere pitch correction. Themes often address love, heartbreak, aspiration, loneliness, and personal struggle, delivered with catchy refrains designed for streaming‑era replayability.

Canadian hip hop is the national hip hop scene of Canada, rooted in the same core elements as U.S. hip hop (MCing, DJing, breakdance, and graffiti) but shaped by Canada’s multicultural cities, regional identities, and media/industry conditions. It includes English- and French-language rap (especially in Quebec), and it often blends North American boom bap and later trap aesthetics with local storytelling about immigrant life, inner-city realities, and Canadian social issues. Historically, the scene grew more slowly than Canadian rock, staying largely underground for years, with a brief burst of mainstream attention around 1989–1991 and more sustained commercial visibility beginning in the early 2000s.

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.