Every type of rap — what it sounds like, who makes it, and how to make one.
Pick a rap style by the sound you want
Fourteen style guides live on this page, and the quick table below routes you to the right one. Rows match the flows and presets the video maker actually offers, so you can go from "I want that sound" to a first draft in one jump.
Nine starting points, routed to a guide or the video maker| If you want… | Try these styles | Next step |
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| Head-nodding drums and dense rhymes | Boom bap (East Coast tradition) | East Coast Rap guide |
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| The classic party-starting sound | Old school hip hop | Old school guide |
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| Slow, deep, cruising bass | Houston chopped-and-screwed | Houston rap guide |
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| A British take on rap | Grime, Afroswing | Grime guide |
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| Spanish or Portuguese bars | Latin rap, Latin trap, Brazilian rap | Latin rap guide |
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| Sung hooks over rap beats | Melodic rap, pluggnb | Pluggnb guide |
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| Sparse, airy, online-era beats | Plugg music | Plugg guide |
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| Loud, distorted energy | Trap metal, drift phonk | Trap metal guide |
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| Rapid-fire syllable runs | Chopper (a built-in flow) | Custom video maker |
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Whichever route you take, write your own bars first — the free rap lyrics generator drafts hooks and verses you can rewrite in your own voice.
Types of Rap: How This Guide Is Organized
Rap styles overlap: geography describes a scene, an era describes a moment, and a production label describes a sound. This guide moves from regional traditions to internet-born approaches rather than treating every label as a separate musical species. Start with Houston Rap for a Southern perspective, Grime Music for a distinctly British rhythm, and Chinese Rap for the relationship between language and delivery. The cards offer one live preset page and six coming-soon ideas; the guides below lead to the custom video maker.
Classic and Regional American Rap Styles
American rap changes from city to city and across generations. Classic East Coast records often foreground detailed verses and sampled drums; West Coast traditions include funk-driven bass and relaxed pockets. Southern scenes range from slow, spacious mixes to fast dance rhythms and repeated hooks. Houston’s chopped-and-screwed tradition makes playback speed itself part of the musical identity. Explore the live East Coast preset above, then compare these related foundations.
Houston Rap
Houston rap is closely associated with chopped-and-screwed mixing: slowed playback, repeated fragments, and cuts that stretch the groove. DJ Screw helped build that local tradition through mixtapes, while slab car culture supplied a setting for deep bass and patient listening. A slow felt pulse does not mean every original recording was composed at a slow tempo. Hooks can gain weight through repetition, and a conversational verse has space to breathe. For a new video, describe low bass, slowed textures, and deliberate delivery rather than asking to reproduce a particular recording.
Make a video in this style →Old School Hip Hop
Old school hip hop points to the party-centered beginnings of recorded rap and the DJ culture that preceded them. Funk and disco breaks, electric bass, scratching, and call-and-response differ from later sample-heavy boom bap. MCing, DJing, breaking, and graffiti are commonly discussed as the culture’s four elements. The label is flexible: 1979–1991 can be a broad listening window, but historians often draw a narrower early period. You may also see oldschool written as one word. Contemporary producers revisit these breaks, although drill is not simply old school played faster.
For the later New York album era, see the golden age of hip hop.
Make a video in this style →UK and European Rap Styles
Grime developed through British electronic dance and pirate-radio culture, with a commonly cited tempo around 140 BPM. Its rhythmic conversation with garage and other local sounds differs from the usual American trap template. European rap also includes large scenes organized around local languages: German-language rap spans political writing, street narratives, pop hooks, and underground experimentation. Neither a country nor a language guarantees one production style.
Grime Music
Grime music grew from London’s electronic underground, with East London a central hub. Sparse synths, hard drum programming, and a roughly 140 BPM framework create room for clipped, agile bars. Eight- and sixteen-bar exchanges matter in clashes and radio sets, where a voice must cut through the instrumental. UK drill can occupy a similar tempo range, but its sliding 808 bass and different percussion patterns separate the two. Listen for how the MC answers electronic accents rather than assuming that every British rap vocal over dark drums is grime.
Make a video in this style →German Rap
German rap is a language-based umbrella rather than a single beat recipe. German lyrics can emphasize tightly packed consonants, internal rhymes, and long multisyllabic chains; social commentary sits alongside battle rap, personal narratives, and melodic pop. Production can draw on boom bap, trap, or dance music, so a useful creative brief specifies the groove as well as the language. Local references and wordplay may travel less easily across language borders, but that does not make the scene culturally isolated. Choose an intelligible cadence before filling every bar with syllables.
Make a video in this style →Latin American Rap Styles
Spanish-language rap is a family of scenes with different local histories, accents, and dance relationships. Vowel patterns help connect rhymes, but rhythm and consonants still matter. Puerto Rico, Colombia, Mexico, and Argentina should not be flattened into one sound. Brazil adds Portuguese-language rap and its own regional traditions; some tracks connect to baile funk, while others use sample-based beats or contemporary trap.
Latin Rap
Latin rap can refer broadly to Spanish-language hip hop across multiple countries and diasporas. Puerto Rican, Colombian, Mexican, and Argentine scenes bring different accents, local slang, and relationships to club rhythms. Spanish offers strong vowel-based rhyme possibilities, but a compelling verse still depends on stress placement and phrasing. Decide whether the track needs a narrative verse, a chant, or a sung hook before selecting its drums. Latin trap is one subgenre within this wider field. The Latin trap video generator card above is marked coming soon; the custom generator is available now.
Make a video in this style →Brazilian Rap
Brazilian rap is performed in Portuguese and includes traditions that cannot be reduced to Spanish-language rap with a different accent. São Paulo has a substantial history of sample-based rap and social storytelling; Rio’s baile funk culture offers another rhythmic vocabulary. Some contemporary productions connect those worlds, but not every Brazilian rap track uses a funk beat. Portuguese stress, nasal vowels, and local speech shape the pocket. For a creative brief, distinguish a direct narrative over dusty drums from a dance-oriented track with syncopated percussion and a repeated hook.
Make a video in this style →African and Asian Rap Styles
African and Asian rap scenes adapt hip hop to local languages and musical networks. Nigerian recordings can move between rap, Afrobeats, English, pidgin, and other languages. Chinese-language rap uses tonal speech, making the relationship between lexical tone and musical pitch especially interesting. Tonal rhyme is not unique to Chinese, and Mandarin, Cantonese, and regional varieties do not share one identical rhyme system. Language is part of the rhythm, not just a translation choice.
Nigerian Rap
Nigerian rap shares audiences and production networks with Afrobeats, especially in Lagos, but it also includes harder, verse-focused hip hop. English, Nigerian Pidgin, Yoruba, Igbo, and other languages can appear within a scene or a single performance. Syncopated percussion and melodic hooks may support relaxed delivery without removing lyrical detail. Afroswing is a related British hybrid shaped by several influences, including Afrobeats and dancehall, rather than a simple renamed export. Its coming-soon card appears above. Specify the language and rhythmic feel when making an original track.
Make a video in this style →Chinese Rap
Chinese rap brings lexical tone into the relationship between a spoken line and its musical contour. Rhyme still involves syllable endings, vowels, and rhythm; matching tones is an expressive option rather than a universal rule. Mandarin, Cantonese, and Sichuan speech offer different sound inventories and local identities, so they should not be treated as interchangeable presets. Television competitions helped expose these scenes to wider audiences, alongside online communities and live venues. For a new verse, choose the language variety first, then leave enough rhythmic room for words to remain understandable.
Make a video in this style →Internet-Born and Underground Rap Styles
Online scenes develop through producers, listeners, uploads, and shared visual references rather than one geographical capital. SoundCloud, YouTube, and short-video platforms helped circulate plugg, pluggnb, drift phonk, and trap metal. Their labels are porous, and popularity on a platform does not prove the platform invented the music. Describe drums, harmony, and vocal texture when labels become ambiguous. Plugg and pluggnb are related, but the added R&B emphasis makes a useful practical distinction.
Plugg Music
Plugg music favors a light, spacious trap framework: airy melodic loops, rounded bass, small percussive details, and room around the vocal. Its online producer culture made the beat’s atmosphere as recognizable as the rapper’s delivery. Minimal does not mean empty; a carefully placed bell or soft keyboard phrase can define the whole loop. Compared with louder trap production, the effect is often buoyant and intimate. To make something in this direction, ask for restrained drums, delicate synth tones, and an unhurried pocket instead of stacking every available sound.
Make a video in this style →Pluggnb
Pluggnb combines plugg’s airy trap framework with a stronger R&B vocabulary: richer chords, bright keyboard runs, and melodic vocals. The boundary is imperfect because producers and listeners use both terms loosely. A practical distinction is that plugg can stay sparse and percussive, while pluggnb foregrounds harmony and sung or pitch-shaped phrasing. The name also circulates through beat marketplaces, where tags describe a mood as much as a strict genre. Ask for soft trap drums and expressive chord movement when you want that combination rather than a generic aggressive trap instrumental.
Make a video in this style →Drift Phonk
Drift phonk is an internet-era offshoot associated with prominent cowbell melodies, saturated bass, and heavily processed vocal fragments. Russian and neighboring online producer scenes helped popularize the sound, while drifting edits and short videos made its visual identity widely recognizable. It differs from earlier Memphis-influenced phonk, which often emphasizes hazy sampling and slower, looser atmosphere. Not every phonk track belongs behind a racing montage. For an original video, use the rhythmic accents and gritty texture as a mood, while keeping the scene tied to your own topic.
Make a video in this style →Trap metal pushes trap percussion toward distorted bass, shouted or screamed vocals, and the impact of heavy music. Some tracks use guitars, while others create aggression entirely through electronic timbre and vocal processing. A visible late-2010s wave helped establish the label, but its boundaries remain fluid rather than marking a scene that simply vanished. The key production problem is separation: distortion can overwhelm words and flatten drum transients. A useful brief specifies where the vocal should be intelligible and where an explosive hook can take over the mix.
Make a video in this style →Five minutes of history: rap eras at a glance
Style labels come from history, so a short timeline helps. The boundaries below are commonly used guideposts rather than official dates, and every era keeps making records today.
Rap eras and where each is covered in this guide| Era | What defined it | Where to read more |
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| 1970s–1984 · Block parties to first hits | New York DJ and MC culture builds the template; recorded rap breaks through commercially in 1979. | Old school guide |
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| 1988–1996 · Golden age | Sample-based production spreads and regional scenes sharpen; the East Coast chapter is the deepest documented on this site. | Golden age on the East Coast guide |
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| 1997–2009 · Crossover and mixtapes | Glossy chart hits and independent scenes grow side by side; online discovery starts to route around radio. | East Coast guide, 1997–2009 |
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| 2010–today · Streaming and internet-born styles | Plugg, pluggnb, drift phonk and trap metal circulate through upload platforms; drill crosses the Atlantic. | Internet-born styles |
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Rap styles FAQ
What are the main types of rap?
There is no single official list. This guide sorts labels with three lenses: region (East Coast, Houston, grime from London), era (old school, golden age), and sound or platform (plugg, drift phonk, trap metal). Most styles mix all three, which is why the quick-compare table routes by the sound you want rather than by name.
What is the difference between trap and drill?
Trap production centers on booming 808 bass, crisp hi-hats and dark keys. Drill shares the 808s but leans on sliding bass, sparser and more menacing percussion, and a clipped, tense delivery. They also name different scenes: trap grew out of Atlanta, while drill developed in Chicago, the UK and later New York.
What BPM are most rap styles?
There is no universal tempo. Classic sample-based tracks often sit around 80–95 BPM, with boom bap commonly described around 85–95. Grime is usually cited near 140 BPM, and New York drill is often written around 140 BPM with a half-time feel, which makes the perceived pulse slower than the number suggests. Treat every figure as a convention, not a rule.
Which rap style is easiest for beginners?
A mid-tempo, head-nodding pocket such as boom bap is the friendliest starting point: the drums leave room for clear words, and 8–12 syllables per bar usually fit without rushing. Write your first bars with the free rap lyrics generator, then bring them to the video maker in any style.
How do I make a rap video in a specific style?
The East Coast preset page exposes era and sub-style choices directly. For every other style, use the custom video maker and describe the sound you want: drums, tempo feel, vocal delivery and language. Original lyrics and your own photos keep the result safe to share.
Why are some style cards marked coming soon?
Dedicated guide pages for those styles are rolling out. The card content above is not a placeholder: each coming-soon card names a real sound, and the custom video maker already accepts a description of it today.
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