Rap is not one sound. Its subgenres are separated by production, lyrical intent, regional origin and era, and the boundaries between them are argued over constantly. This guide covers 13 of the types you will hear named most often, from sample-based boom bap to 808-driven trap, with typical tempos and the traits that separate them.
Calling something rap tells you almost nothing about what it sounds like. A Kendrick Lamar album and a Playboi Carti album are both rap, but the label covers them the way "vehicle" covers a sedan and a dump truck. The production, the lyrical density, the vocal delivery and the audience expectations are all different.
The types of rap below are the ones producers, journalists and playlist editors name most often. Treat the list as a working map rather than a closed taxonomy. Subgenres overlap, artists move between them, and plenty of records sit in two categories at once. If you are newer to the production side, Music Production Basics covers the fundamentals underneath all of them, and Hip-Hop Release Strategy covers what to do once you know your lane.
13 Common Types of Rap at a Glance
Tempo ranges below are conventions producers work in, not rules, and sources disagree on several of them. A track that can be counted at either half or double speed gets listed differently depending on who is counting. The artists named are representative of a style, not claims about who founded it.
Subgenre | Typical BPM | What defines it | Representative artists |
|---|---|---|---|
Boom bap | 85-100 | Sampled breaks, swung drums, lyricism up front | Nas, Wu-Tang Clan, Joey Bada$$ |
Trap | 130-170, often near 140 | Tuned 808 bass, rapid hi-hat rolls, sparse minor-key loops | Future, Young Thug, Migos |
Drill | 140-145 in the UK and Brooklyn; Chicago often counted at 60-70 | Sliding 808s, cold minor melodies, hard delivery | Chief Keef, Pop Smoke, Central Cee |
Melodic rap | 130-160 | Sung hooks, autotune as texture, melody over bar count | Juice WRLD, Lil Uzi Vert, Don Toliver |
Phonk | 130-160 with a half-time feel | Memphis vocal chops, cowbell, distorted 808s | DJ Smokey, Freddie Dredd, Kordhell |
Crunk | 130-145 | Call-and-response shouts, heavy bass, party tempo | Lil Jon, Three 6 Mafia, Ying Yang Twins |
Hyphy | 95-110 | Bay Area slang, high energy, trunk-rattling low end | Keak da Sneak, Mac Dre, E-40 |
Jazz rap | 80-100 | Jazz samples or live players, dense wordplay | A Tribe Called Quest, Digable Planets, The Roots |
Lo-fi rap | 70-90 | Mellow loops, jazzy chords, bedroom-recording aesthetic | Earl Sweatshirt, MIKE, Navy Blue |
Cloud rap | Varies, usually slow | Reverb-heavy synths, hazy vocals, atmosphere over drums | Lil B, Yung Lean, Bladee |
Conscious / lyrical | Varies | Lyrical intent, not a fixed production style | Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, Noname |
Gangsta rap | Varies, often 85-110 | Street narrative, G-funk or hard-edged beats | Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Nipsey Hussle |
Horrorcore | Varies | Horror imagery and violent narrative, not a fixed sound | Geto Boys, Esham, Gravediggaz |
Sound-Defined and Subject-Defined Types
Most of the labels in that table describe how a record is built. A few describe what it is about. Mixing the two is why subgenre arguments run in circles.
Trap, drill, boom bap, phonk, crunk and hyphy are sonic categories. You can identify them from the drums alone, with the vocal muted. Conscious rap, gangsta rap and horrorcore are subject categories, defined by what the lyrics deal with. A conscious rap record can be built on a trap beat and still be conscious rap.
This distinction matters when you tag a release or pitch it. Genre fields on distribution forms and playlist pitches generally expect the sonic category, because that is what a listener hears in the first five seconds. The lyrical category belongs in your pitch text and your bio, where it has room to do more work.
Boom Bap: The Sound of the Sample Era
Boom bap is onomatopoeia. Boom is the kick, bap is the snare. The phrase is usually traced to T La Rock's 1984 record "It's Yours", and KRS-One's 1993 album "Return of the Boom Bap" is what pushed it into wide use. DJ Premier has said the term was already circulating in hip-hop before either record, so treat the origin as contested rather than settled.
The production leans on vinyl samples, chopped breakbeats and a swing feel that keeps the drums off the grid. Lyricism sits at the center. The vocal rides on top of the beat and the expectation is technical: wordplay, internal rhyme, storytelling, breath control. Artists including Griselda and Roc Marciano work in the style today, pairing vintage sampling with modern mixing.
Trap: The 808 Template
Trap is the sound most associated with Atlanta, and the name comes from Southern slang for a place where drugs are sold. Where the genre starts is contested. Southern records from the 1990s by UGK, 8Ball & MJG, Master P and Three 6 Mafia are routinely named as precedents, while T.I.'s 2003 album "Trap Muzik" helped introduce the term to a broader audience.
The production template is consistent: tuned 808 bass carrying the bass line, rapid hi-hat rolls, and sparse melodic loops that usually sit in a minor key. Tempos are commonly written between 130 and 170 BPM, often near 140, and feel half-time because the snare lands on beat three. The 808 itself does most of the work here, and some grounding in minor keys and scale choice makes writing those loops faster.
Trap production spread well past rap. Pop, R&B, Latin and country records borrow its drum programming and its 808 patterns.
Drill: Three Cities, One Name
Chicago drill came out of the city's South Side around 2010, with Chief Keef, Lil Durk, King Louie and G Herbo in the first wave. London picked the sound up from about 2012 and rebuilt its rhythm, and the sliding 808 bass that now signals drill anywhere came out of that UK rework. Brooklyn fused the two and broke through nationally at the end of the decade, largely through Pop Smoke.
The three are different enough that the word drill usually needs a qualifier. What Is Drill Music breaks the regional variants down in detail, and Trap vs Drill sets the two side by side. If you produce, drill chord voicings are the other half of the sound.
Melodic Rap: Hooks Over Bars
Melodic rap blurs the line between rapping and singing. Autotune works as a texture rather than a correction tool, producing a vocal that sits between a sung melody and a rapped cadence. The hook carries the record, not the verse.
It is heavily represented on mainstream rap playlists, and the usual explanation is replay value. A melody you can hum gets saved and repeated in a way a dense verse often does not. That is an observation about listening habits, not a ranking of skill. Popularity also moves quickly, so treat any snapshot of what is on top as dated by the time you read it.
The writing order tends to flip too. Where a bar-driven writer starts from a concept and builds verses, melodic writers often mumble a topline over the beat first and fit words to it afterwards, which is why so many melodic hooks scan oddly on paper. Tracking through autotune while you record rather than adding it in the mix also changes the take, because you are performing against the pitch correction instead of around it. How to Write a Rap Song covers both approaches.
Phonk: Memphis Through a Short-Form Feed
Phonk builds on chopped vocals from 1990s Memphis rap, layered over distorted 808s, cowbell patterns and deliberately degraded lo-fi production. Its current audience arrived largely through TikTok and YouTube, where the drift car community attached it to edit videos. The 130-160 BPM range and the aggressive energy suit short clips well.
It is also one of the more approachable styles to produce. The sample sources are well documented, the tempo conventions are clear, and the arrangements are short. What Is Phonk Music covers the subgenres and the culture, and Phonk vs Funk clears up the naming collision that trips people up.
Genres That Sit Next to Rap
Some styles get filed near rap without being subgenres of it, and search results mix them in constantly. Knowing where the boundary sits is practical, because a wrong genre tag on a release sends the track to the wrong listeners.
Hyperpop overlaps at the edges, since the SoundCloud and digicore scenes around it put rapped verses over pop and electronic production. Jungle is a British dance genre built from chopped breakbeats, several of them taken from the same records early hip-hop producers were sampling. Footwork comes out of Chicago's juke and ghetto house scenes, and shares a city with drill but very little else. For the wider view, Music Genres Explained maps how the major genres relate.
Choosing Your Lane
Genre identity shapes a lot of downstream decisions. Your subgenre points you at particular playlist curators, particular collaborators, a visual language and a live format. A boom bap artist touring with a DJ and a mic is running a different show from a trap artist with hypemen and screen visuals.
You do not have to pick one and stay there. Plenty of artists blend styles or move between them across projects. Knowing the conventions of the lane you are in, or the one you are borrowing from, is what makes the borrowing deliberate.
If you are building a career in rap, independent or signed, genre literacy is where positioning starts.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many types of rap are there?
There is no agreed number. Rap subgenres overlap and get named by critics, producers and playlists at different times, so published lists run from around ten to several dozen depending on how finely they split.
What is the difference between trap and drill?
Trap uses tuned 808 kicks and hi-hat rolls and is associated with Atlanta. Drill uses sliding 808 bass and colder melodies, started in Chicago, and was reshaped in London before reaching Brooklyn.
Is mumble rap a real genre?
"Mumble rap" is a contested label rather than a settled genre category; critics use it, some artists have also used or reclaimed it, and tracks described that way can overlap with melodic rap or trap.
What tempo is rap usually?
Rap commonly sits around 70 to 100 BPM, or 130 to 160 counted at double speed with a half-time feel. Trap and drill can feel slow at high BPMs because the snare lands on beat three.
Read Next
Once you know which lane you are in, the planning starts. How to Plan a Music Release is the step-by-step version. Orphiq is where that plan lives afterwards. Apollo, Orphiq's AI music strategist, builds the timeline backward from your release date and adjusts it when the date moves.