In our Beat Building series, we're showing you how to produce beats, grooves and drum patterns in a variety of styles and genres, touching on various eras of production, to help you understand the key rhythmic elements behind many of today’s biggest tracks.
You can divide hip-hop beat production into two major trends: the MPC-powered beat chopping of ’90s beatmakers like DJ Premier, and the spacious 808 beats of the trap style that developed in the ’90s and ’00s in Southern US cities like Atlanta. These two styles are not entirely independent of each other however, and many modern hip-hop artists incorporate elements of both.
Hip-hop beats are designed to be rapped over, so you need to provide rhythmic thrust for your MC
Our beat fits somewhere between the two – it’s powered by spacious 808 bass and includes a hint of trap’s signature triplet hi-hats, but our snare and clap are treated with a little lo-fi crunch emulating the sampling techniques of the ’90s. We’re also taking a little influence from the woozy, lo-fi sound of cloud rap. The overall effect is channelling adventurous modern artists like Tyler, the Creator who incorporates elements of multiple styles.
Sound-wise, aim for punch and power – hip-hop beats are designed to be rapped over, so you need to provide rhythmic thrust for your MC while leaving plenty of space for their voice. Our groove here is relatively straight; we’ve added about 5% swing and we’ve used a fixed velocity throughout for a mechanised feel. We have manually nudged our claps off the grid to make the beat feel a little wonky in places though. A classic bpm for hip-hop is between 85-100.
Building the beat...
We start with the KICK. This is a long, powerful 808 kick, tuned to the root of the track as it’s also providing the primary bass. By bouncing this and loading it into a sampler we get more control over the pitch and decay envelope. Kicks are placed sparsely, on the first beat of bars 1 and 3, but avoiding the first beat of 2 and 4.
Next, the SNARE sits on the third beat of each bar, with a few extra hits to create a slight fill in bars 3 and 4. We’ve used a drum machine snare, processed using an emulator of a classic Akai S900 sampler to add crunch. We’ve also pitched the snare down a touch and boosted the attack for a punchy hip-hop feel.
Our HI-HAT is a short, metallic 808-style closed hat. We start by placing hits on every beat, creating a simple straight rhythm. Next we change our grid to triplet mode, and add short, rapid-fire flourishes, mostly in bars 2 and 4, creating the ‘marching’ feel of trap beats.
Our hi-hat is joined by a simple, short SHAKER sound in bars 1 and 3. Finally, we add some CLAPS, again processed with an Akai S900 emulator for low bitrate crunch. We use two claps; the second is shorter but sent to a reverb to add space.
Our lo-fi feel comes from the processing. We add saturation across the whole beat to gel everything and add presence to the kick. For our woozy, cloud rap feel we treat our hi-hat with some modulated effects: a resonant filter driven by a slow LFO, a BBD style chorus and a little auto-pan. Finally, we use a transient shaper across the whole beat.
Trap tracks can be very spacious, and often feature few music elements beyond a basic beat. More old-school or melodic hip-hop usually includes a sampled hook though. Try a short loop of pitched down piano, lo-fi synths or a soul/gospel vocal.
