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The 10 greatest trip-hop bands of all time

22 February 2023, 11:52

By Tom Eames

Trip-hop emerged in the 1990s as a leading force of downtempo electronic music.

Originating largely in Bristol in the early 1990s, trip-hop has been described as a psychedelic mix of hip-hop and electronica, with slower tempos and an atmospheric style. It also uses elements of jazz, soul, funk, reggae, R&B, and other genres, as well as often sampling film soundtracks and other sources.

Trip-hop was first coined by Mixmag , and it soon had commercial success by the second half of the decade.

From its pioneers of the '90s to the artists they influenced, here are the greatest trip-hop artists:

Morcheeba - Blindfold (Official Video)

Formed in the mid-1990s with singer Skye Edwards and brothers Paul and Ross Godfrey, Morcheeba emerged with sublime influences of rock, folk and downtempo, becoming a leading force in the trip-hop movement, starting with 1996's Who Can You Trust?

They have released 10 studio albums since 1995, with the latest being 2021's Blackest Blue .

Although they have moved on to other genres since their early trip-hop days, they still must be counted as one of the genre's greatest acts.

Sneaker Pimps

Sneaker Pimps - 6 Underground (Official Music Video)

Formed in Hartlepool in 1994, Sneaker Pimps' debut album, Becoming X was a seminal trip-hop LP in 1996.

Best known for the single '6 Underground', the band takes its name from an article the Beastie Boys published in their Grand Royal magazine about a man they hired to track down classic sneakers.

The band was created by electronic musician Liam Howe and guitarist Chris Corner, and then later recruited singer Kelli Ali (then known as Kelli Dayton).

After a long hiatus, the group returned with Howe and Corner in 2016, and they finally started releasing new music in 2021.

Little Dragon

Little Dragon - Twice

Swedish band Little Dragon hail from Gothenburg, having formed in 1996.

The band currently consists of singer Yukimi Nagano, Erik Bodin (drums), Fredrik Wallin (bass) and Håkan Wirenstrand (keyboards).

Their first release was the incredible single 'Twice' in 2006, and they brought out their debut album a year later.

Nagano was in her first year in high school when she met seniors Wallin and Bodin. The three of them would meet up after school to jam and play records, and their band name was inspired by the 'Little Dragon' nickname Nagano earned due to the "fuming tantrums" she used to throw while in the studio.

UNKLE - Rabbit In Your Headlights

UNKLE was founded in 1992 by James Lavelle.

In 1997, Lavelle brought in DJ Shadow to work on his debut album, which was released a year later. The album featured collaborations with the likes of Thom Yorke (Radiohead), Mark Hollis (Talk Talk), Mike D (Beastie Boys), Badly Drawn Boy and Richard Ashcroft (The Verve).

UNKLE as an outfit still exists today, though Lavelle has featured various incarnations of the collective, hiring a wide range of guest musicians and producers along the way.

His most recent studio album release with 2017's The Road: Part 1.

Martina Topley-Bird

Sandpaper Kisses

English singer and multi-instrumentalist Martina Topley-Bird first found fame when she featured on Tricky's debut album, Maxinquaye in 1995.

She also worked with him on his subsequent albums Nearly God and Pre-Millennium Tension, and then in 2003, she released her debut solo album Quixotic. The album was a critical hit and earned her a Mercury Prize nomination.

She has since worked with the likes of Gorillaz, Diplo and Massive Attack among others, and her track 'Sandpaper Kisses' has been covered Stephen Marley and sampled by The Weeknd.

Lamb - Gorecki

Electronic music duo Lamb formed in 1996 in Manchester, and consist of producer Andy Barlow and singer-songwriter Lou Rhodes. Rhodes' distinctive vocals gave them a uniquely beautiful sound, and no doubt inspired the likes of The Knife and Goldfrapp.

Their brand of trip-hop is also influenced drum and bass and jazz, and are best known for their singles 'Górecki' and 'Gabriel'.

Despite a hiatus in the 2000s, they have continued to release music, with their most recent being 2019's The Secret of Letting Go .

DJ Shadow - Midnight In A Perfect World

Speaking of DJ Shadow...

Joshua Davis is an American DJ, songwriter and record producer, known for his famous alter ego. His debut studio album, Endtroducing..... was released in 1996.

DJ Shadow's music often involves manipulating samples, bringing in rare pieces of music and sound clips, from all kinds of genres, particularly on his early albums.

His most recent LP was the double album Our Pathetic Age in 2021.

Portishead - Glory Box

Portishead - named after the place in Somerset, formed in 1991 in Bristol. Comprising of singer Beth Gibbons, producer Geoff Barrow, and musician Adrian Utley, engineer Dave McDonald is also sometimes credited as the fourth member.

• The Story of... 'Glory Box' by Portishead

Their 1994 album Dummy brought together hip-hop production with emotive vocals from Gibbons, creating a particularly atmospheric and cinematic sound. It was one of the albums that defined trip-hop as a growing genre.

Portishead themselves have disliked being associated with the genre, and would later move away from the sound on later albums.

Tricky - 'Black Steel' (Official Video)

British artist Tricky was raised in Bristol, and began his career as an early member of Massive Attack.

He soon began a solo career with his debut album, Maxinquaye , in 1995. It instantly won him huge critical acclaim, and he released four more studio albums before the end of the decade. His most recent album was 2020's Fall to Pieces .

Tricky is considered a pioneer of trip-hop, with his style known for being often dark in tone, and blending cultural influences and genres, such as hip-hop, rock and reggae.

Massive Attack

Massive Attack - Unfinished Sympathy

Trip-hop pioneers Massive Attack formed in 1988 in Bristol, led by Robert '3D' Del Naja, Adrian 'Tricky' Thaws, Andrew 'Mushroom' Vowles and Grant 'Daddy G' Marshall.

Their debut album Blue Lines was released in 1991, with the single 'Unfinished Sympathy' considered one of the greatest songs of all time, let alone trip-hop.

1998's Mezzanine - containing the classic track 'Teardrop') and 2003's 100th Window were also UK number ones.

They have won various awards of the years, and have sold over 13 million copies worldwide.

Like Portishead, they have never been a massive fan of the 'trip hop' label. Daddy G said in 2006: "We used to hate that terminology [trip-hop] so bad. You know, as far we were concerned, Massive Attack music was unique, so to put it in a box was to pigeonhole it and to say, 'Right, we know where you guys are coming from."

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10 Essential Trip-Hop Albums

Last month, Treble explored the greatest albums in hip-hop released in the 1990s . It was a great exercise in being immersed in the beat-heavy sounds of the era, but it also inspired us to do a post-script of sorts on the outgrowth of hip-hop that happened in the Bristol club scene in the UK. Using hip-hop beats as a foundation for darker, late-night grooves and smoky atmosphere, trip-hop created a fascinating fusion. As the genre celebrates its 25th anniversary (assuming you count Massive Attack’s “ Any Love ” as the first real trip-hop release, which we suppose is debatable), we assembled our list of 10 of the best trip hop albums. Because nobody loves us — not like you do.

Portishead – Dummy

(1994; Go! Discs/London)

This is not the beginning of trip-hop — that arguably started back in 1988 when Massive Attack released their debut single. But it wasn’t until around 1994 that the phrase began to make the rounds outside of its incubating scene in Bristol, UK, and began to circulate in the U.S. and beyond. And it’s thanks in large part to Dummy , the breathtaking debut album by Portishead. Named for a small English town, Portishead took a hazy, dark approach to pop music, blending crackly hip-hop beats with sparse guitar licks, noir film samples and a fetish for John Barry. Dummy became a cult hit on the strength of gorgeous, catchy singles like “Sour Times” and “ Glory Box ,” though between those tracks, the group stuffed in moments of soul balladry, heavy-hitting boom-bap beats and swampy, psychedelic dirges. At the time it was completely alien and strange, but compelling in spite of the weirdness that characterized it. That didn’t last — within a few years, everyone would come to copy the Portishead template, diluting it a little each time until it lost its intrigue. Even Portishead lost interest; in 2008, the release of the fucked-up, paranoid sounding Third represented a huge transition for the band, revealing once again that Geoff Barrow, Beth Gibbons & Co. are about innovation above all. – JT

Nightmares on Wax – Smoker’s Delight

(1995; Warp)

After releasing an album on then-fledgling label Warp Records in 1991, Nightmares on Wax founder George Evelyn stepped away to run a dance club in Leeds, DJ, and start his own record label.  The context is important because unlike many of the other notable trip-hop releases, Smokers Delight has a distinct DJ feel to it, with an aesthetic that relies on multiple melodies being seamlessly layered on top of each other throughout the course of a song. The transitions between movements are always fluid as new pieces are pulled into the picture by a crossfader that moves at a snail’s pace. Take for instance the opening track, “ Nights Introlude ,” which weaves in a “Summer In The City” sample — the one made popular by Pharcyde’s “Passin’ Me By” — after already establishing a perfectly fine high hat and string-based groove. Evelyn clearly has a fine ear for samples and uses them tastefully but frequently to extremely satisfying ends. Smoker’s Delight has aged surprising well over the years; for all of the styles that Evelyn touches on throughout the record from hip hop to funk to dub, there’s a unifying coherence that’s the true litmus test of a master DJ — a quality that’s difficult to map when done well but easy to spot when botched.- DG

Tricky – Maxinquaye

(1995; Island)

When Tricky left Massive Attack after Blue Lines , there were questions about how he would respond to the challenge of establishing himself as a solo artist. With Maxinquaye , one of the most prodigious debuts of the past three decades, Tricky put those questions to rest with one fell swoop. As enthralling and bold as Blue Lines is, Maxinquaye arguably transcends it with greater scope, ambition, and passion (the album is named after Tricky’s mother, who committed suicide). One can simply play any of the tracks on the album to test this assertion; from the bony rattle of “ Ponderosa ” — which brilliantly samples Shakespeare’s Sister — to “Abbaon Fat Tracks,” a distorted sex ballad, to the languidly gorgeous closer “Feed Me,” Maxinquaye passes every time. Truthfully, its only downside to speak of is that it set the bar too high for Tricky, who hasn’t quite been able to match its brilliance again. Bad for Tricky, good for all of us. – CB

Laika – Sounds of the Satellites

(1997; Sire)

Formed by former Moonshake vocalist Margaret Fiedler and producer/engineer Guy Fixsen, Laika took trip-hop to weird new places. Though the duo used beats and grooves in much the same way that Portishead or Massive Attack did, their manic, polyrhythmic arrangements were far more complex and weird than the club crowd might have been ready for. The lead single from Sound of the Satellites , “ Prairie Dog ,” slinks along a dub-inspired 7/4 rhythm, and the frantic pace of tracks like “Poor Gal” feel more like Rema in In Light -era Talking Heads or Metal Box -era Public Image Limited than anything happening in Bristol. This is intense, but fun stuff, and maybe not the most traditional of trip-hop records, but definitely one of the best.

Air – Moon Safari

(1998; Source/Caroline)

Air may not fit the British, café lounge archetype that’s associated with a majority of popular trip-hop acts, but the French duo’s first full-length expands on all of the genre’s chill-out aims. Guest vocalist Beth Hirsch contributes to what would become one of Air’s all-time most popular songs, “All I Need”, as well as another album highlight, “You Make It Easy.” Believers in warm introductions and kind goodbyes, Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel put their two most languid and spacey tracks at the front and back of Moon Safari . Starting things off is “ La Femme D’Argent ,” an instrumental that stays tethered to a thick-stringed, yet subtle bassline, but stretches out with spiraling arpeggios, spunky synth keys and refreshingly human hand claps. Moon Safari isn’t so much an album you stop listening to as it is a kind of dream you wake up from; the exact events from the experience are a hazy memory but the color of the ride leaves a vivid, pleasant impression. – DG

Massive Attack – Mezzanine

(1998; Virgin)

Most groups that emerged during the trip-hop era weren’t terribly prolific, and by 1998, a second wave of tepid coffeehouse trip-hop had become the sleepy norm. Having released their last album Protection in 1994, Bristol’s Massive Attack at this point weren’t front and center in the conversation in the same way that Portishead was before taking an extended break, or with the bright flicker that artists like Esthero and Hooverphonic would briefly enjoy. But in the summer of 1998, Massive Attack not only returned, they did so with their best album yet, a dark, sinister head-trip of an album that crept slowly and hit with lethal force. Mezzanine found Massive Attack entering a dark phase in their career, which hasn’t really ever ended, though this is the moment where it’s most potent. The eerie lurch of “Angel,” the stoned dub-funk of “Risingson,” or the evil pulse of “Inertia Creeps” — it amounts to an album by a group seemingly no longer interested in the more positive aspects of club music, as Blue Lines suggested. This is its sweaty, grimy, scraped-up, paranoid, sleazy and possibly even dead underbelly. – JT

Morcheeba – Big Calm

(1998; Sire)

Some parts of Morcheeba’s sophomore LP, Big Calm , have not aged well. The background DJ scratching on “Blindfold” feels forced and awkward, “The Music That We Hear” is an unnecessary pop rework of a debut album stand-out (“Moog Island”), and I can practically smell the incense when the sitar comes in on “Shoulder Holster.” Those few awkward elements aside, Big Calm is held up on the merits of a few choice tracks, namely lead single “The Sea,” “Let Me See” and “Over and Over.” Singer Skye Edwards’ relaxed coolness gives each song a degree of levity without ever dropping the sultry edge. It’s a fine line to tip-toe and Edwards always stays a few short steps in front, enticing the listener with the promise of satisfying hooks that come when expected. From the loud bounce of “Let Me See” to the sparse “Over and Over” Edwards has the right balance of tranquility and sexuality to keep heart rates low and attention high. – DG

UNKLE – Psyence Fiction

(1998; Mo’ Wax)

For me, as it was with likely most listeners who picked up Psyence Fiction , the big sell was a collaboration between DJ Shadow and Thom Yorke. In the late ’90s, there was no more glorious dream collaboration, Yorke’s vulnerable vocal performance on “ Rabbit In Your Headlights ” matched perfectly by James Lavelle and Josh Davis’ chilly sample arrangement. However, it was just one of many interesting stylistic detours on an album that used trip-hop as a foundation for even bolder experiments. The Verve’s Richard Ashcroft lent his vocals to the epic, string-laden “Lonely Soul,” Mike D and Metallica’s Jason Newstead teamed up on the scrappy hip-hop of “The Knock,” and the then-unknown Badly Drawn Boy helmed the harder rocking “Nursery Rhyme.” Yet the instrumentals dazzled as well, like the gorgeously psychedelic “Unreal,” which was later released in an alternate version with vocals from The Stone Roses’ Ian Brown. It was all very lush and gorgeous, but should anyone get the wrong impression, that UNKLE had no sense of humor, segue “Getting Ahead in the Lucrative Field of Artist Management” dedicated its 54 seconds to a hilarious commercial for a board game called “Ball Buster.” (Snicker…) – JT

Goldfrapp – Felt Mountain

(2000; Mute)

In the 13 years that have lapsed since Goldfrapp first made their debut with Felt Mountain , they’ve taken many a stylistic detour, from trashy electro on Black Cherry , to beat-driven glam-pop on Supernature , psych-folk on Seventh Tree , and inexplicably upbeat new wave on Head First . And generally speaking, Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory do a bang-up job each time they switch up the formula. Yet their debut follows a trip-hop aesthetic in much the same way that Portishead laid it out, with sexy, dark soundscapes that blend the string-laden grandeur of John Barry’s Bond themes with the eccentric folk touch of Lee Hazelwood. It’s one of the group’s most stunning albums altogether, from the sultry shuffle of “Lovely Head” to the lush orchestration of “Pilots.” Whether or not you prefer Goldfrapp in sequins, spandex, furs or forests, it’s hard to argue that Felt Mountain isn’t one hell of an album. – JT

Nathaniel Merriweather presents… Lovage – Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By

(2001; 75 Ark)

In 2001, under his “Nathanial Meriweather” moniker, Dan The Automator produced a trip-hop album featuring Jennifer Charles (of Elysian Fields) and Mike Patton (of Faith No More, Tomahawk and Mr. Bungle) on vocals. The mixes on Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By featured Kid Koala on turntables, as well as a couple other Deltron 3030 collaborators. The album paid tribute to Alfred Hitchcock, Serge Gainsbourg, and new wave rockers Berlin. If all that doesn’t convince you to listen to this smooth hour of turntable-heavy trip-hop, I don’t know what will. – AK

No becoming X = fail list

Becoming X was nowhere near good enough to be in any ‘Best of’ list. Kelli Dayton’s voice was never in teh same league as her compatriots.

Where is esbe? He’s in the top ten in my book.

Becomimg x, fuck no lol

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‘Music dug up from under the earth’: how trip-hop never stopped

Fused from jungle, rave and soul, trip-hop filled the coffee tables of the 90s, and is now inspiring Billie Eilish’s generation. So why is the term so despised by many?

N obody really wanted to be trip-hop. The stoner beats of Nightmares on Wax’s 1995 Smokers Delight album were era defining, but it carried the prominent legend: “THIS IS NOT TRIP HOP”. James Lavelle’s Mo’ Wax label flirted with the term after it was coined by Mixmag in 1994, but quickly switched to displaying it ostentatiously crossed out on their sleeves. Ninja Tune did print the phrase “triphoptimism” on a king size rolling paper packet in 1996, but only as a joke about escaping categories.

“I always disliked the term,” says Lou Rhodes of Lamb, “and I would always make a point in interviews of challenging its use in regard to Lamb.” Mark Rae of Rae & Christian similarly says: “I would give a score of 9/10 on the lazy journalist scale to anyone who placed us in the trip-hop camp.” And Geoff Barrow’s ferocious hatred of the term – let alone its application to Portishead – has become the stuff of social media legend.

The distaste is understandable. The template of crawling beats, cinematic strings and dubby basslines, usually with a female vocalist and weed-smoking signifiers, became one of the most ubiquitous sounds of the late 90s. The phrase itself stretched to become a catch-all for any and all downtempo music, from wafty supermarket-checkout budget CD “chillout” to highly crafted UK soul. It very quickly became the object of snobbery, called “coffee table music” by those who found the idea music could be comforting or domesticated an anathema.

But whatever you call it, the specifically 90s downtempo vibe abides. Nightmares on Wax’s new album, Shout Out! To Freedom …, shows producer George Evelyn as committed to cosmic beats, and as inspired, as ever, and Smokers Delight got a deluxe reissue treatment last year. Martina Topley-Bird ’s Forever I Wait (featuring several productions by Robert “3D” Del Naja of Massive Attack), the reformed Sneaker Pimps’ Squaring the Circle, and even Saint Etienne ’s mostly instrumental I’ve Been Trying to Tell You all meander moodily in classic trip-hop style. Jhelisa , whose albums in the 90s easily bridged the gap between trip-hop and acid jazz, is back and on spectacularly trippy form with 7 Keys V.2, too.

And perhaps even more significantly, younger musicians are channelling the sound. Some of the most high-profile acts in the world – Billie Eilish, Lana Del Rey, Lorde – are unabashed in these 90s references. Alicia Keys’ new single, Best of Me, couldn’t be more trip-hop if it was made in a smoky Bristol basement in 1995. In the leftfield, acts such as Young Echo, Tirzah and Space Afrika explore some oddly familiar dark, dubby spaces, the latter citing Tricky as a key precedent. A lot of the new UK soul and jazz, from Jorja Smith through Children of Zeus to Moses Boyd and Sault, is distinctly trip-hoppy; Arlo Parks’ Mercury prize-winning album is steeped in it, as is tattooed, cosmic dub-soul provocateur Greentea Peng. Homebrew “lo fi” remixes of anime and game themes, which could easily pass as trip-hop, regularly clock up tens of millions of streams on YouTube, as do streams of trip-hoppy “beats to study/chill/sleep to”. Even UK drill is demonstrating a connection, in the album False Hope by Tara Mills , with music by drill and road rap producer Carns Hill. “It’s interesting that whole era’s come round again,” says Evelyn, remarking on the extraordinary Afghan-German producer Farhot’s similarity to DJ Shadow. “Then of course you start thinking: am I that old?”

To understand the durability of these sounds, it’s worth looking at some of the objections to the way they were labelled. Evelyn grew up with reggae soundsystem culture and was a hip-hop and electro fanatic, who breakdanced competitively as a teen. He regarded his early rave tunes as hip-hop collage in the tradition of instrumentals by Mantronix, Marley Marl, DJ Red Alert and co. “But,” he says, “in the UK we’re really good at taking something and making it our own, and when I think about that whole 90s period, it was exciting: we were doing that whole downtempo thing, but fused with all that other exciting electronic shit that was happening at the same time. The drum’n’bass thing, the jungle thing, that was all born out of the same set of influences. I do think about the 90s a lot. It was exciting; it felt like a new sound was coming out of the UK every three days.”

Rhodes, too, took inspiration in the breakbeat collage of rave. “Our background was nights at the Haçienda and Manchester pirate stations,” she says, remembering Peter Bouncer’s vocal over Shut Up and Dance’s breakbeats on the 1992 rave track Love Is All We Need. “My mum was a folk singer, and I felt the pull to write songs that danced around those fucked-up beats. That was the impetus for Lamb.” The closeness to techno, rave and electronica was embodied in labels such as Warp, Ninja Tune and Mo’ Wax, where Squarepusher, Autechre, Roni Size and Carl Craig would sit alongside – or remix – downtempo acts. It’s a lineage explored in the 2020 book Bedroom Beats & B-Sides by Laurent Fintoni , which also explores how trip-hop influenced the likes of Flying Lotus (an avowed Portishead fan), and thus the experimental “beat scene” and 21st century hip-hop more broadly.

The other vital precursor was the UK’s unique soul lineage. “Sade, Cymande, Soul II Soul,” remembers Evelyn, “that was the foundation of our whole thing too. Even when we were rocking [reggae] soundsystems, you’d always have that half-hour or so when they’d play street soul or rare grooves. That all influenced all of us; I’m sure someone like [Massive Attack’s] Daddy G would say the same thing.” Through the late 80s and early 90s, acts such as Smith & Mighty, the Sindecut, Young Disciples and, of course, Soul II Soul and Massive Attack made a very distinctly British laid-back breakbeat sound ubiquitous from charts to underground clubs. The acid jazz movement overlapped with this, too: it’s the scene Mo’ Wax emerged from, and Liam Howe of Sneaker Pimps recalls, around 1993, “taking our white labels around the record shops of Soho, where you might bump into [acid jazz movers] Kevin Beadle, Gilles Peterson, James Lavelle and Patrick Forge … we were making peculiar, laid-back dance stuff that at the time we referred to just as ‘head music’.”

Jhelisa Anderson is one of the more obvious connections to the soul/jazz world, but also one of the few musicians who fondly embraces “trip-hop” as a term. Mississippian by birth, she relished British eccentricity and independence, as compared with a US industry that “would’ve had me trying to copy Janet Jackson”. She found, in Portishead , Tricky and Topley-Bird, “a version of modern blues, a depth and darkness” that drew a line from 60s and 70s soul, but also had a connection to “something old and pagan that I heard in Thom Yorke and shoegaze, a different kind of ancient expression of feeling blue, of being dark”.

That conception of a kind of specifically British blues isn’t so far fetched. Tara Mills wasn’t born when Massive Attack’s Unfinished Sympathy came out, but cites it as one of her favourite songs: “I’ve cried to that song, I’ve driven home too fast, upset, in the middle of the night, to that song.” And she found precisely the right darkness in Carns Hill’s drill beats to “make you feel something in that same way”. And the moodiness and melancholy have permeated through to a new generation in many other ways. Rhodes hears “a kind of bloodline running through James Blake and the xx” to Billie Eilish and co. Her son Reuben, who releases downtempo beats as Joseph Efi, connects the “Bristol sound” of Portishead and Massive Attack to the ineffable sadness of Burial. “There’s something about the melancholia of those Bristol tunes,” he says, “that could’ve only come from the depths of a small British city. Music dug up from under the earth or heard in the pouring rain on your walk home at night.”

This mood has gradually spread around the world. As well as through electronic and hip-hop artists such as Flying Lotus, and ubiquity of tracks such as Rob Dougan’s Mo’ Wax hit Clubbed to Death in Hollywood soundtracks, the British moodiness found its way into big pop exports. Mark Rae notes that “our production and writing of the track The Hush by Texas-influenced Dido, and the domino effect is created when that language is taken to the mainstream successfully”. It’s not a big leap to hear trip-hop echoes in Mark Ronson’s work with Amy Winehouse and Adele – and there are direct connections, too: Howe, for example, has passed on the trip-hop gene as a writer and producer for the likes of FKA twigs, Lana Del Rey and, indeed, Adele.

It seems like the further we get from its origins, the less toxic the phrase seems. Even Topley-Bird, who never accepted it at the time “because I thought we felt pretty unique”, says “in America people talk about trip-hop without any sense of shame or embarrassment, which is endearing … And a few friends are telling me that artists like Billie Eilish sound like me – which can’t be a bad thing. I came back with new music at the right time!”

Nightmares on Wax’s album Shout Out! To Freedom … is out now on Warp. Mark Rae’s novel and soundtrack The Caterpillar Club is out now on Mark’s Music. Sneaker Pimps’ album Squaring the Circle is out now on Unfall. Jhelisa’s album 7 Keys V.2 is out now on Dorado. Martina Topley-Bird’s self-released album Forever I Wait is out now. Tara Mills’ album False Hope is out now on CL Management. Joseph Efi’s EP Candour is out now on Lowlife.

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Even in its earliest days, trip-hop was always something of a sonic mutant. In the early ‘90s, it fused hip-hop and electronica with nods to jazz, funk, dub, and soul in ways that were comfortingly familiar yet unnervingly alien. Trip-hop’s popularity arguably peaked in the mid ‘90s, as pioneering acts like Portishead, Massive Attack, Tricky, Unkle, and DJ Shadow gained both critical and commercial renown. While the latter may have faded as the new millennium approached, the passing of time hasn’t dulled the influence it provides for countless young acts. Now, at a time when almost every micro-genre and musical amalgam is fair game, artists are mining trip-hop for inspiration as a launchpad for their own musical experiments. By merging hip-hop with everything from IDM to world music, the 10 artists in this list show that trip-hop is still the same vehicle for both artistic exploration and sonic rebellion that it’s always been.

Submotion Orchestra Kites

Based in London, Submotion Orchestra are a seven-piece who released their grandiose, panoramic fifth album, Kites , in March. Their music layers rich orchestration onto a dubby rhythmic base, veering from nocturnal jazz to somber neoclassical and making them one of the most kaleidoscopic acts in recent years to have reworked the basic trip-hop template. Distinguishing them even further from most (recent) trip-hop are the vocals of frontwoman Ruby Wood, whose plangent tones endow the otherwise dreamy music with a bracing earthiness.  

Moderator Sinner’s Syndrome

The Greek producer Moderator is an exponent of the more cinematic, noir- ish school of trip-hop. On fourth album Sinner’s Syndrome , he samples the reverb-heavy guitars of film soundtracks, the rasping horns of Latin music, and employs a series of ominous vocal tracks and monologues, all of which combine to establish a claustrophobic—yet strangely seductive—atmosphere. Hauntingly chilly tracks such as “Poison Thoughts” and “Red Headed Devil” have an intoxicating groove, yet their guitar-soaked instrumentation is tensely wound and deceptively sinister, as if hinting at the violence beneath the surface of some Mediterranean paradise.  

Thievery Corporation Treasures from the Temple

Perhaps the most well-known trip-hop act who are still currently active, the Thievery Corporation are a Washington, D.C. duo who have been releasing their own patented mix of dub, acid jazz, and electronica since 1995. Their latest release, Treasures from the Temple , is a companion album to 2017’s The Temple of I & I , which saw co-conspirators Rob Garza and Eric Hilton move into a breed of layered trip-hop influenced by reggae and other Jamaican music. It features 12 outtakes and/or remixes which, despite their technical status as “leftovers,” continue the duo’s enviable tradition of reverently appropriating a variety of world musics and blending them to create a distinctive, multicultural soundscape.  

Perera Elsewhere Drive

Despite tagging her jittery, electronics-heavy music as “doom-folk,” the Berlin-based Perera Elsewhere provides one of the most innovative examples of trip-hop around. Loosely comparable to the work of FKA twigs, her most recent records—May’s Drive EP and last year’s All of This —are full of fluid, constantly churning songs that superimpose volatile melodic fragments over knotty beats and droning bass. Cuts such as “You’ve Lost” ( Drive ) and “Happened” ( All of This ) marry the late-night moodiness of vintage trip-hop with an acute awareness of our modern obsession with self and identity.  

ILL CLINTON Eternal Blue Sky

Based out of Philly, ILL CLINTON is a producer who takes the underlying flow of trip-hop and clothes it in an eclectic array of synthetic textures and abstract samples. His Eternal Blue Sky album from May ranges from chilled ambience to cavernous bass music, and while it stands more at the hip-hop end of the trip-hop spectrum, it also offers an insight into the philosophy that guides much of the genre. According to ILL CLINTON, the crossing and mixing of boundaries on such tracks as “EAST SMITHWICK DR.” and “PENALTY IS DEATH” is intended to “inspire a higher plateau of consciousness.” While there’s no guarantee that will be attained by most listeners, its liberal approach to composition still provides a diverse and enlightening listen.

Brock Berrigan The Narrows

Another beatmaker and sampler, Brock Berrigan is a New York-based producer whose music jumps dizzily from one style to the next, often within the space of a single track. His latest effort, March’s The Narrows , was inspired by a month-long hike around Utah, and while this might imply that the musical result is austere and dry, it’s a remarkably colorful and jubilant record. “Sittin'” and “Hotwire” twist a variety of soul and funk samples together to uplifting effect, while “King of the Rats” and “Off the Grid” wind more regal, string-led instrumentation into tight, evocative loops. In either case, the album offers a transportive experience, one that belies its arid origins.  

Culprate Unity Project, Pt. 4

Culprate hails from Bristol, the epicenter of the original trip-hop scene, which puts the producer in a prime position to build on its foundations in new and unusual ways. And he does just this on March’s Unity Project, Pt. 4 , the latest in a series of EPs based around collaborations conducted via the musician’s own Twitch channel. This isn’t the only thing particular to the EP, since its heavy electro, brooding dubstep, and scattergun IDM make it possibly the most otherworldly “trip-hop” record released in quite some time (well, since Culprate’s last effort). “Run” is heavy dubstep from a dystopian future, and “Poison” is an atmospheric builder that abruptly transforms into blistering glitch. Similarly, the other four tracks on the EP suggest where trip-hop could go in the next decade.

emancipator Baralku

The Portland-based emancipator makes downtempo trip-hop that’s atmospheric, emotive, and richly textured. This is particularly evident in his most recent album, Baralku , which uses live instrumentation from a variety of guest musicians to create tracks that are more bodied, rounded, and articulate than those from comparable producers. Pieces such as “Ghost Pong” begin with ponderous bass and downbeat ambience, only to gain stirring impetus from the added violins and synths. Meanwhile, tracks such as “Pancakes” and “Time for Space” feature a combination of live bass and flute that infuse the music with a bittersweet optimism, as if insinuating that all happiness is tinged with sadness, and vice versa.

MyHoliday Rain

Evoking the taut elegance of early Portishead, MyHoliday are a Russian trio who make post-trip-hop that’s blissfully languid yet deceptively intense. April’s Rain LP is full of ghostly melodies, shuffling beats, and ethereal vocals from lead singer Alena Scherbina, who surrounds the melancholic guitar chords and floating synths with a yearning, searching aura. On slow-burning pieces, such as “Hiring Architect,” the band leave plenty of space for each bass, synth, and guitar note to drift and echo upwards, where they become more resonant and richly allusive as a result.  

Slowly Rolling Camera Juniper

Always a reference point in most trip-hop, jazz is brought to the fore in the music of Slowly Rolling Camera. Based in Wales, the three-piece (originally a quartet) create near-epic songs that not only mix trip-hop with jazz, but also with cinematic music, prog, chamber music, and soul. In contrast to the minimalism of certain acts in the genre, their previous two records—2014’s Into the Shadow and 2016’s All Things —were maximalist affairs, often using impressive, exploratory musicianship to reach grandiose crescendos. And their latest album, Juniper , looks set to continue this M.O., with the opening title track pulling its sax, piano, and guitar through a breathtaking series of peaks and valleys.

Honorable Mention

Morcheeba blaze away.

While they may be over familiar to anyone with even a passing knowledge of the genre, Morcheeba have continued to plough their own furrow of poppy trip-hop since first coming to prominence in 1996 with their debut album, Who Can You Trust? They’re also one of the few ’90s acts to have continued releasing records to this day, with ninth album Blaze Away . By fusing a range of summery genres (including lounge, bossa nova, and soul) with Skye Edwards’s honeyed voice, it’s sure to appeal to anyone who’s ever wished that trip-hop were a bit more song-oriented and accessible.

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Illustration by: Mat Pringle

Like it or not, trip-hop is a thing. I say this as someone who, for the past 18 odd years, has loved the music just as much as I’ve hated the term.

Coined in June 1994 by Andy Pemberton in a feature for Mixmag , trip-hop was used to describe the recent stylistic shift of the Mo’ Wax label and that music’s popularity in dance circles, particularly in after hours sessions. Pemberton heralded trip-hop as a psychedelic take on hip-hop and the first valid alternative to America’s dominance of the music.

The DNA of trip-hop was more complex than its reduction to bite-sized adjectives. One strand came from hip-hop, which had fed the musical imagination of a new generation for over a decade, while another strand came from rave, which had provided further stylistic possibilities with its fusion of drum machines, breaks, samples and synthesisers. Sound systems, digging, dub, chill-out rooms, early globalisation and technology also acted like so many molecules attaching themselves to a new idea of what hip-hop could be. Trip-hop was a logical evolution in a decade during which everyone came down from a partying high to face the reality that hip-hop and dance music were being co-opted by the mainstream; dreams of a new sonic utopia crushed by the relentless onslaught of capitalism.

Just as techno had become a synonym for dance music, trip-hop soon became a crutch for journalists and marketers wanting to signify hip-hop without rappers. Most notably, it became a byword for the Bristol sound epitomised by bands like Massive Attack and Portishead. In 1998, The New York Times retconned Massive Attack’s debut album Blue Lines as the so-called genre’s inception point.

On the ground, the sound did resonate in a genuine way among a new generation of musicians seeking freedom to experiment. In London, Ninja Tune played yin to Mo’ Wax’s yang. Both labels crafted a unique visual dimension and assembled expansive rosters. In Paris, DJ Cam pushed out his own blunted beats to eager continental heads. In Austria, Kruder & Dorfmeister added an extra layer of dub and turned trip-hop into downbeat in a haze of weed paranoia. In New York City, a loosely linked group of artists, thinkers and musicians spread from downtown Manhattan to Brooklyn’s cheap warehouses to imagine their own version of the sound, which The Wire magazine dubbed illbient. No matter the names or the execution, the DNA was the same.

It was always going to end badly. Mo’ Wax, often seen as responsible for the sound, originally kicked off riding the acid-jazz wave, a sound that soon exhausted itself into a creative cul-de-sac. By the late 1990s, trip-hop had become nothing more than limp, often stoner-friendly, coffee table hip-hop beats. It was music for people who felt rap was too dangerous. To those who believed in it though, it always held a promise of things weird and wonderful.

Alongside IDM (another etymological faux pas from the 1990s), trip-hop presaged the beat scene of the late 2000s, a continuation of the ideas and aesthetic it first articulated. When I spoke to Daddy Kev in 2012, he pointed to Mo’ Wax as one of the key influences for Low End Theory. Flying Lotus has cited DJ Krush as an influence. And tastemakers like Gilles Peterson have championed the music’s evolution across decades.

https://www.traditionrolex.com/21 In putting together this list, we tried to take all of this into account. There is no purism to indulge in, because there is nothing pure about trip-hop. As DJ Food’s Strictly Kev put it recently, at its best the music was “psychedelic beat collages, usually instrumental, embracing samples, analogue electronics and dub FX.” The list is contained to the 1990s for historical accuracy and tries to steer away from the music’s strongholds to show the width and breadth of the sound. As such, you’ll find artists from France, Northern Ireland, Japan, America, Denmark and Brazil represented as well as releases from Asphodel, Wordsound, Rephlex, Warp and a handful of majors. It’s also worth noting that when an artist had multiple worthy albums (for instance, Portishead or Massive Attack), we only included their most definitive moment.

Listen to the whole list as a playlist via YouTube  or   Spotify .

50. London Funk Allstars London Funk Volume 1 (Ninja Tune, 1995)

London Funk Allstars’ Ninja Tune debut will likely sound dated to most who come across it for the first time today. And yet, amid the simple breakbeats, classic loops and obvious vocal chops there’s a real beauty that captures the essence of a simpler time when the possibilities seemed endless and technology was providing new ways to think about music.

49. Bomb The Bass Clear (4th & Broadway, 1994)

Tim Simenon might not be the most obvious pick for a trip-hop list, but Clear exhibits plenty of the genre’s hallmarks. Tossing away the rave collage aesthetic that had made ‘Beat Dis’ such a massive success, Simenon weaves an ambitious narrative, tying together dub and hip-hop-influenced tracks with heady spoken-word clips from writers Benjamin Zephaniah and Will Self. There are also notable contributions from influential figures such as Leslie Winer (if you haven’t heard her 1993 album Witch , you should seek it out immediately), Bernard Fowler and Bim Sherman, opening up a dialogue between New York, Jamaica and the UK that would remain at the center of the genre for years to come.

48. Slicker Confidence in Duber (Hefty, 1998)

John Hughes’s Chicago-based Hefty imprint was crucial in cementing the relationship between Chicago’s burgeoning post-rock scene (led by Tortoise) and the seemingly more experimental (and more European) IDM and trip-hop genres. This union would reach its peak in 2001 with Telefon Tel Aviv’s massive Fahrenheit Fair Enough , but a few years prior, Hughes himself was making similar strides under his Slicker moniker. Confidence in Duber sits firmly alongside Scott Herren’s early Delarosa & Asora experiments, snatching the breaks ‘n’ blunts from trip-hop and injecting them with digital belches cribbed from the IDM playbook. Oddly enough, it’s aged better than you might expect, and is well worthy of re-investigation.

47. Meat Beat Manifesto Subliminal Sandwich (Interscope, 1996)

Subliminal Sandwich is Meat Beat Manifesto’s fourth album and their first on a major label via Nothing Records, a subsidiary of Interscope helmed by Trent Reznor that was intended to capitalise on the success of Nine Inch Nails. The album proved a critical and commercial flop, though it remains an interesting offering, drawing links between trip-hop, dub, industrial and ambient with a touch of psychedelia. Split across two CDs, it’s the first half that’s of most interest here as the rest focused on drone and ambient compositions. The 18 tracks draw heavily on samples and breaks combined with pulsing basslines, heavily processed vocals and an overall gritty finish that makes it sound like the bastard child of Mo’ Wax and Bill Laswell’s Axiom Records.

46. 9 Lazy 9 Paradise Blown (Ninja Tune, 1994)

Early Ninja Tune beatmakers 9 Lazy 9 might not sound as crucial now as they did back in the mid 1990s, but there’s still fun to be had on Paradise Blown , their second album. The Italy-based group (including Funki Porcini’s James Braddell) added a distinctly light-hearted lounge quality to a genre that could often dwell in the darker crevices, and as such  Paradise Blown can be filed alongside offerings from Tim ‘Love’ Lee and Tipsy, even if it’s not anywhere near as endearingly experimental.

45. UNKLE Psyence Fiction (Mo’ Wax, 1998)

Mo’ Wax boss James Lavelle’s pet project, UNKLE, remains a controversial part of the trip-hop canon. With distance, Psyence Fiction is possibly more enjoyable than it was back in 1998, and it highlights the genre’s crossover potential with guest spots from Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, The Verve’s Richard Ashcroft (then riding high after the success of ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’) and Badly Drawn Boy, but it’s hard not to see it as a slightly cynical marketing exercise. DJ Shadow, who was drafted to co-write the album, was quick to speak out about his unhappiness with both the process and the result, but Psyence Fiction is representative of a time and place, and shows trip-hop’s promise as it was being co-opted and transformed into something that labels could whitewash and monetize. Zero 7 was just around the corner.

44. Tipsy Trip Tease – The Seductive Sounds of Tipsy (Asphodel, 1996)

It might be a stretch to classify Tipsy as trip-hop, but the Californian duo of Tim Digulla and David Gardner certainly used many of the same tools as their European peers. Pillaging loops from a wide variety of lounge and exotica records, Digulla and Gardner came up with a dusty, defiant and undoubtedly downbeat look at sound collage. Since it veered away from obvious breaks and beats, Trip Tease actually holds up markedly better than some other records of the era, and ends up sounding closer in style to David Holmes, with a smoky, cinematic quality.

43. Justin Warfield Field Trip To Planet 9 (Qwest, 1993)

Released a year before the term trip-hop was coined in Mixmag , Justin Warfield’s first and only solo album is included here largely thanks to Strictly Kev, who recently pointed out its relevance  with regard to the music’s supposed psychedelic properties. My Field Trip To Planet 9 is a rap album, cut from the same cloth as Check Your Head -era Beastie Boys and Digable Planets. But remove its vocals and behold music that sounds like it wouldn’t be out of place on Mo’ Wax or Ninja Tune a few years later. At its best, trip-hop was music for b-boys on acid, as Warfield sang on the album’s single. A year later, he provided the vocals for Bomb The Bass’s ‘Bug Powder Dust’, another bonafide rap-on-acid classic that got the trip-hop treatment via Paris’s La Funk Mob and Vienna’s Kruder & Dorfmeister.

42. Smith & Mighty Bass Is Maternal (More Rockers/!K7, 1995)

You can’t have a conversation about trip-hop without mentioning Bristol, and you can’t talk about the Bristol scene without giving a nod to Smith & Mighty. The West Country duo took soundsystem culture and a hefty scoop of the ideas informing an increasingly popular jungle scene and helped formulate an entire sound. Without them, Portishead, Tricky and Massive Attack simply wouldn’t sound the same. Bass Is Maternal is the best representation of their scope, and illustrates their experimentation as they attempted to summarize the meeting point between UK rave culture and Jamaican dub. It’s not always successful, but to ignore it is to disregard an important chapter in British musical history.

41. DJ Vadim U.S.S.R Repertoire (The Theory of Verticality) (Ninja Tune, 1996)

The first of Vadim’s four albums for Ninja Tune, U.S.S.R Repertoire is a weeded-out take on an American musical form by a Russian immigrant living in the English capital – an instrumental microcosm of hip-hop’s globalisation. Beneath a layer of simplicity, there is depth to Vadim’s approach; the beats feel expansive, the music inviting the listener to cradle in the grooves of the breaks and warmth of the bass. Much of this debut also acts as an echo of what Wordsound and We™ were doing across the ocean at the same time. As Vadim’s 1995 debut on his own Jazz Fudge imprint proclaimed, heads weren’t ready.

40. Funki Porcini Hed Phone Sex (Ninja Tune, 1995)

After a decade penning film and TV music in Italy, British producer James Braddell decided to head to London and set up his own studio, where he would use some of his commercial writing tricks to come up with Funki Porcini, one of the most recognizable names on Ninja Tune’s early roster. This was trip-hop with a side helping of very English humour, from the moniker itself to the record’s awkwardly suggestive cover. Musically, Braddell laid out a template that would be traced over for years to come with his combination of dusty hip-hop rhythms and booming dub bass. The swirling, reverb-drenched samples just added an extra layer of thick smoke to an already bloodshot premise.

39. Red Snapper Prince Blimey (Warp, 1996)

If the elephant in the room here is acid jazz, Red Snapper are one of the rare acts who addressed it head-on. Prince Blimey is their first full-length and is certainly more overtly jazzy than most of the records we’ve highlighted on this list. That’s not a negative though, the trio – a bassist, guitarist and drummer – had genuine chops, and managed to inject their musical training into a more contemporary mode, touching on trip-hop and drum & bass without ever sounding forced. It’s a concoction that might now sound too close to the coffee table dreck that sat next to a copy of American Psycho and a rolled up tenner at the close of the millennium, but Red Snapper managed, somehow, to keep things edgy and unusual. They even, somewhat inexplicably, ended up touring with The Prodigy.

38. Various Artists DJ Kicks: Kruder & Dorfmeister (!K7, 1996)

Despite becoming the figureheads of Austria’s downbeat scene (a continental take on trip-hop), Viennese duo Kruder & Dorfmeister never released an album. Instead it was through their debut EP, G-Stoned , and absurdly popular mix CDs that they accrued fame. Their 1996 contribution to !K7’s DJ-Kicks series captured the sweet spot between the blunted grooves of chill-out rooms and the rolling breaks of jungle, an approach they’d refine two years later on The K&D Sessions . K&D’s arrival on the scene came at a time when trip-hop had started to resemble a safe version of hip-hop for those seeking thrills without effort, and their mixes remain as close as you can get to the bland, coffee table take on the genre without feeling too sick.

37. Wagon Christ Throbbing Pouch (Rising High Records, 1994)

With releases under a variety of aliases on seminal labels like Ninja Tune, Mo’ Wax, Planet Mu and Rephlex throughout the 1990s, Luke Vibert is one of the artists that best connects the dots between the various styles and ideas that fed into trip-hop. His second release as Wagon Christ pieces together elements from hip-hop, the burgeoning UK dance music scene and electro into a colourful sonic puzzle that glides along in splendid fashion. Or as Select put it at the time, “the missing link between Aphex Twin and Mo’ Wax.”

36. Tim ‘Love’ Lee Confessions of a Selector (Tummy Touch, 1997)

As boss of the Tummy Touch label, Tim ‘Love’ Lee had an important part to play in the development of downbeat and trip-hop, not least thanks to his discovery of future genre stars Groove Armada, but the less said about that the better. Confessions of a Selector might be his finest achievement, not quite reaching fully into the trip-hop cookie jar, instead relying on Lee’s estimable crate digging expertise. The hallmarks of the genre are there, but prettied up with luscious tropical vistas and an eccentric (but smart) cut-and-paste quality that isn’t a million miles from US duo Tipsy.

35. Psychonauts Time Machine (Mo’ Wax, 1998)

Psychonauts were Mo’ Wax’s secret weapon, so much so that James Lavelle had them provide mixes under his name – ghost mixed, if you will. Time Machine was his payment for services rendered, and it’s a fine document of the era, not only rounding up some of Mo’ Wax’s finest moments, but also showing just how important turntablism and truly creative mixing was to the scene’s development. Most songs don’t get more than a minute of air time as the duo power through almost 50 tracks in half an hour, blending together cuts from genre luminaries DJ Krush, Luke Vibert, DJ Shadow, La Funk Mob and more. If you need a quick-to-digest taster of the genre, this is as good as it gets.

34. Prince Paul Psychoanalysis (What Is It?) (Wordsound, 1996)

We can already hear the furious typing of wronged hip-hop heads asking with disgust why Prince Paul is even on this list. Psychoanalysis is here for a bunch of reasons: it was originally released by Wordsound, a label most associated (wrongly or not) with illbient, NYC’s answer to trip-hop; it’s a rare example of a fully instrumental hip-hop album from a city that, in the 1990s, had no time for anything that didn’t have rappers on it (Skiz Fernando Jr., who ran the label, recounted stories of Fat Beats refusing to stock the album at the time); and it’s basically 15 tracks of Prince Paul taking his whole skit philosophy to its most absurd conclusion. For all these reasons and more, Psychoanalysis remains a slept-on classic from the 1990s, a half-way point between trip-hop’s European roots and its infatuation with American hip-hop.

33. The Herbalizer Blow Your Headphones (Ninja Tune, 1997)

Jake Wherry and Ollie Teeba’s The Herbalizer project was a fine example of trip-hop’s most visible back-and-forth with “proper” hip-hop. They weren’t afraid to work with emcees, and on Blow Your Headphones , their second album, they found a kindred spirit in Natural Resource’s What? What?, now better known as Jean Grae. She added an important element to Wherry and Teeba’s jazz-flecked backdrops, and while it’s certainly true that many of trip-hop’s consumers were looking for a safer alternative to charged US rap, The Herbalizer walked the tightrope admirably, and were markedly more successful in bridging the genres than many of their peers, who buckled when attempting to integrate emcees.

32. The Bug Tapping the Conversation (Wordsound, 1997)

Another release that will likely raise a few eyebrows for its inclusion, The Bug’s debut album nonetheless fits within the wider idea of what trip-hop could, and should, be about. There are a few other reasons too: it was released on Wordsound; DJ Vadim provided the drum samples; and, like the best trip-hop releases of the 1990s, it was a soundtrack for life, with the listener invited to let their mind fill in the blanks. The blend of hip-hop, dub and industrial influences that would go on to characterise Martin’s work is found here at its rawest and tracks like ‘Those Tapes Are Dangerous’ show a darker side to trip-hop’s blunted potential.

31. Neotropic Mr Brubaker’s Strawberry Alarm Clock (Ntone, 1998)

Riz Maslen is often more widely associated with electronica (no doubt thanks to her early association with Future Sound of London), but her second Neotropic album Mr Brubaker’s Strawberry Alarm Clock is one of the trip-hop era’s hidden gems. The record appeared on the Ninja Tune sister label Ntone, and is one of the few full-lengths on this list that still sounds truly bizarre and alien. On top of the usual dusty breaks, Maslen lavished elements absorbed from IDM’s palette but left behind its seemingly random, artificial bent. The conversation between trip-hop and IDM was very visible in the late 90s – Plaid being the most obvious example – but Maslen avoided many of the trappings of both scenes, emerging with a record that was probably “too future” for most beatheads.

30. Various Artists Headz (A Soundtrack Of Experimental Beathead Jams.) (Mo’ Wax, 1994)

After a forgettable false start peddling iffy acid jazz, Mo’ Wax made a stylistic shift in 1994, kickstarting a four-year period that continues to resonate two decades on. The first Headz compilation is a neat 18-track digest of that transition, a declaration of what was to come. Influences, ambitions and comments on the status quo of the time are found in the slowed down grooves and samples as well as the track titles: ‘Ravers Suck Our Sound’, ‘Contemplating Jazz’, ‘In Flux’, ‘The Time Has Come’. The titular beatheads may have seemed like a stoned, uncreative bunch at the time but their aesthetic has proven resilient. Alongside obvious names like DJ Shadow, La Funk Mob and R.P.M, Headz also featured Nightmares On Wax, Autechre, Howie B. and various members of Major Force.

29. Various Artists Eleven Phases (Sublime, 1998)

Eleven Phases is a true gem, a little-known compilation of downtempo and instrumental tracks from many of Detroit’s finest techno artists including Robert Hood, Kenny Larkin, Eddie Fowlkes and Anthony Shakir. Originally released in Japan only, the compilation makes for a fascinating snapshot of the hip-hop roots and leanings of the city’s dance music pioneers. Will Web’s ‘Cosmic Kung-Fu Funk’ slows down techno’s rawness to a blunted, hip-hop-influenced slouch while Robert Hood’s ‘Mystique’ wouldn’t be out of place on a !K7 compilation. Despite emerging entirely outside of the 1990s trip-hop world, Eleven Phases shows how the core ideas and principles of the aesthetic bled into various scenes and cities throughout the decade.

28. Solex Solex vs. Hitmeister (Matador, 1998)

It makes sense that one of the best (and weirdest) records in a genre that deifies crate diggers should come from a record store owner. Elisabeth Esselink’s debut album was hard to categorize when it landed in 1998, there were elements pilfered from plenty of genres but not really enough of one or the other for categorization. Not only this, but Solex vs. Hitmeister emerged on the Matador label, then best known for releasing indie records. It was certainly aimed at a different crowd from the usual green-thumbed beatheads with a complete collection of Mo’ Wax 12″s and a line of Gundam figurines on their desk, and that was a good thing. Esselink was a breath of fresh air, and Solex vs. Hitmeister ‘s peculiar charms still resonate as she tangles her voice through hiccuping collages of unwieldy samples and collapsing drum machine loops.

27. Various Artists Funkjazztical Tricknology (Ninja Tune, 1995)

Released in 1995, the first Ninja Tune compilation arrived between the two Headz volumes from Mo’ Wax, providing a perfect counterpoint that showed how similar yet different the London powerhouses were at the time. Focused largely on early Ninja artists such as 9 Lazy 9, The Herbaliser, Coldcut and DJ Food, it also features appearance from Austria’s downbeat kings Kruder & Dorfmeister and Attica Blues, who had just joined Mo’ Wax. As with the first Headz volume, Funkjazztical Tricknology also marked the beginning of a shift for Ninja Tune with its releases becoming essential not just for the music but also their design, packaging and words of in-house scribe Shane Solanki, who invented the Ninjaspeak that played into the label’s growing mythos.

26. DJ Food Recipe For Disaster (New Breed, 1995)

No other artist embodies Ninja Tune quite like DJ Food, the multifaceted DJ project set up in the early days of the label by its founders, Coldcut. As its name implies, DJ Food was set up to provide DJs with the necessary ingredients to do their thing. For the first five years, the collective – Coldcut, Strictly Kev and PC – released loops and other tools via the Jazz Brakes series, some of which is great, while some is just as forgettable as the more tepid early Mo’ Wax releases. In 1995, DJ Food went for a meatier offering with their debut album, A Recipe For Disaster . Using the same approach that had made their Solid Steel mixes and live appearances unmissable, they pieced together 16 tracks that veer from downtempo moody to breakbeat furious and proved that they knew their way around the trip-hop kitchen just as well as the best of them.

25. DJ Krush & Toshinori Kondo Ki Oku (Apollo, 1996)

The collision of avant-garde jazz and trip-hop was bound to happen. Experimental players throughout the world were desperate to open up a conversation with younger producers, and trip-hop (as well as drum & bass) was an obvious crash-pad, considering its liberal pilfering of the genre via sampling. Ki Oku is one of the best examples of this collision, despite trumpeter Toshinori Kondo turning in a surprisingly straightforward performance throughout. (This is a musician who had gone head to head with Peter Brötzmann and John Zorn – we weren’t exactly expecting him to toot out a cover of Bob Marley’s ‘Sun Is Shining’.) But it works. What could, in the wrong hands, have been one of the worst abuses of both jazz and trip-hop tropes, is actually remarkably measured and incredibly listenable.

24. We™ As Is. (Asphodel, 1997)

We™ formed by accident in the early 1990s after DJ Olive had been asked to contribute a track to Wordsound’s Certified Dope Vol.1 compilation for which he roped in fellow Brooklyn musicians Lloop and Once11. In the following years the trio became one of the emblematic acts of New York’s short-lived illbient scene, drunk off the possibilities afforded by the experiments that drove their creative ecosystem, where ambient, dub and hip-hop floated freely in a haze of smoke between cheap Brooklyn lofts and downtown squats. Their 1997 debut for Asphodel is a blistering run through hip-hop instrumentals, ambient lulls and drum & bass exercises that highlight the music’s chill-out roots and breakbeat fetish.

23. Amon Tobin Bricolage (Ninja Tune, 1997)

Known for his virtuoso sound design and increasingly complicated A/V shows, Brazilian producer Amon Tobin might seem like an odd addition to a list of trip-hop albums, but bear with us. His second album Bricolage emerged from the dust of trip-hop, appearing on Ninja Tune and offering a view of the scene through cracked glass. Tobin provided a more precise (and, let’s be honest, less stoned) take on the trip-hop sound, absorbing drum & bass and IDM influences without batting an eyelid. The result is an accomplished midpoint between the edit-heavy trickery of Squarepusher and Aphex Twin and the moody soundscapes of Krush, Vibert and Shadow.

22. Third Eye Foundation Semtex (Linda’s Strange Vacation, 1996)

Matt Elliott may have been a total outlier to most of the scenes that piled up to intersect at trip-hop, but Semtex is an example of how certain musicians could absorb familiar tropes without sacrificing originality. Elliott’s Third Eye Foundation debut fused breaks and booming sub bass with sounds more common to shoegaze: endless reverb, screaming and grizzled distortion. Traces of drum & bass (which would emerge more clearly on Elliott’s follow-up album Ghost ) slipped in-and-out of focus, and Semtex doesn’t really feel like part of one movement or another, rather adjacent and dizzy from ether and cheap draw. If anyone tries to tell you Bristol was just Portishead, Tricky and Roni Size, play ’em this burner.

21. Attica Blues Attica Blues (Mo’ Wax, 1997)

Like many of the artists and albums featured in this list, Attica Blues is trip-hop thanks to the location and affiliations of its creators at the time. A trio composed of producers Charlie Dark (then D’Afro) and Tony Nwachukwu (of CD-R fame) alongside singer Roba El-Essawy, Attica Blues made jazz-influenced hip-hop that happened to have a woman singing on it instead of emcees rapping. In the 1990s, thanks to genre purism, that meant your shit wasn’t rap and therefore wasn’t hip-hop. Attica Blues is one of Mo’ Wax’s better and more slept-on full lengths, a deft exercise in sampling, programming and arranging, back when doing so took more than a few clicks of a mouse.

The best trip-hop owed plenty both to the art of mixing and the cut-and-paste aesthetic of the 1980s, which is why a handful of releases on this list are mix CDs rather than albums. Cold Krush Cuts is a perfect example of how those two ideas influenced the music at its peak, and has the bonus of acting as a handshake between the two London labels most associated with the tag. Krush was Mo’ Wax’s Japanese weapon, and Coldcut and DJ Food were Ninja’s own zen masters of audio collage. The result is a still-classic double CD with the London boys arguably edging it thanks to a wide selection and craftsmanship reminiscent of their acclaimed Journeys By DJ entry; DJ Krush goes for the mind, limiting his selections to only six of Ninja Tune’s artists and slicing the cuts up in his trademark less-is-more approach.

19. Depth Charge 9 Deadly Venoms (Vinyl Solution, 1994)

A natural progression from the movie-obsessed NY rap of Wu-Tang Clan et al, 9 Deadly Venoms used a backbone of cult film samples to underpin gritty hip-hop instrumentals that helped inform a fast-growing scene. This was the blueprint for the Mo’ Wax 12″s to come: music based around the kind of nerd fandom that in 1994 was still a counter-culture. It still plays like an authentic labour of love for Jonathan Saul Kane, as he blends chops from The Evil Dead and Dirty Harry with collapsing breaks and ominous textures – it’s hardly surprising that the producer ended up establishing a company to issue UK versions of Hong Kong action movies.

18. Nearly God Nearly God (Island, 1996)

Described by Tricky as “a collection of brilliant, incomplete demos,” Nearly God is a bright, often-forgotten reminder of just how unmatched Tricky was in the 1990s. He called the record Nearly God , for fuck’s sake, and that wasn’t far from the truth. The album acted as a stop-gap between Tricky’s genre-defining Maxinquaye  and his difficult (but almost equally brilliant) about-turn, Pre-Millenium Tension . It stands apart simply because of its scope – there are appearances from regular collaborator Martina Topley-Bird, but also tracks with Alison Moyet, Björk, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Terry Hall. What sounds like it could have been a self-indulgent victory lap for (back then) one of the UK’s most notorious stars is somehow a coherent, exemplary document of a peculiar time in British music. Tricky also has to be commended for having the good sense to veto a collaboration with Damon Albarn (and then Suggs) which could have easily been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

17. Skylab #2: 1999 “Large As Life And Twice As Natural” (Eye Q , 1999)

Skylab was a short-lived collective composed of Matt Ducasse, Howie B and the Japanese duo of Tosh and Kudo, aka Love TKO from Major Force. They released two albums on Sven Vath’s Eye Q label before disappearing, and their work was among the better but lesser-known of the trip-hop era. Ducasse has gone on record to state that their attachment with the genre was unintentional and that he saw their work as “more expansive, […] more in common with collage music […] or soundtracks.” And yet, those ideas were also at the heart of what the best trip-hop could be. In many ways Skylab were not so different to Portishead in both their intentions and execution. Their second album was released just as the label folded, leading it disappear into the cracks of time until a reissue by Tummy Touch earlier this year. Howie B had left by this point, and vocalist Debbie Sanders joined the trio to craft a beautiful record which really goes out there and was praised by both critics and knowledgeable fans.

16. Laika Silver Apples of the Moon (Too Pure, 1994)

Emerging from post-rock band Moonshake, Laika orbited the trip-hop genre without succumbing to many of its less flattering trappings. When guitarist and vocalist Margaret Fiedler commented in 1995 that her band was “just like trip-hop, but much much faster,” she was doing herself a massive disservice. A cursory listen might not even reveal too many obvious similarities – like Portishead, Laika were taking elements of post-rock, krautrock and certainly hip-hop to provide something reactionary, and different from the pervasive, laddish Britpop that was polluting the charts at the time. While their contemporaries Stereolab (and later, Broadcast) were experimenting with drum machines and synthesizers, Laika were integrating samples and a deep passion for jazz and dub. Silver Apples of the Moon is one of the most singular albums on this list, and one of the most rewarding.

15. Nightmares on Wax Smokers Delight (Warp, 1995)

Few records from this era quite capture the nexus of styles that trip-hop could represent at its best than Nightmares On Wax’s second album for Warp. Pulling from the same influences that defined the late 1980s rave explosion, Smokers Delight reconfigured the UK’s summer of love for the Discman generation while remaining just as suited to chill-out room comedowns or Ibiza sunset sessions.

14. REQ One (Skint, 1997)

Sure, Skint might still be best known for breaking Fatboy Slim, but don’t turn away just yet. Brighton-based producer (and sometime graf writer) REQ offered up one of the most blunted takes on the genre, almost by accident. His compositions didn’t pander to the popularity of the growing trip-hop scene, instead dwelling in a noisy, near-ambient back room. He made hip-hop instrumentals that sounded like they were being beamed in from a parallel universe via 14.4kbps modem, and in doing so, avoided being both pigeonholed and, well, popular. His brilliant debut album One has barely dated, fitting as well alongside DJ Spooky or even Dälek as it does anything the Bristol scene had to offer. One sounds, at times, like an MPC tumbling down a distant stairwell into a muddy lake, and we couldn’t think of a better recommendation than that.

13. Crooklyn Dub Consortium Certified Dope Vol.1 (Wordsound, 1995)

Skiz Fernando Jr.’s Wordsound label was in many ways the dubbed-out New York answer to Mo’ Wax, a home for what its founder coined dub-hop: music that blended the dusty boom bap that ruled the city at the time with the mixing desk mysticism of Jamaican dub. Certified Dope Vol.1 was Fernando’s attempt at cataloguing the music of like-minded artists who populated the Greenpoint and Williamsburg neighbourhoods in the early 1990s, including the likes of We™, Dr. Israel and Bill Laswell. Swinging like a pendulum between full-on dub and head-nod instrumentals, the compilation was one of the first to highlight the parallels between hip-hop’s sampling aesthetic and Jamaica’s dub.

12. DJ Krush Meiso (Mo’ Wax / Sony, 1995)

I imagine that choosing a favourite DJ Krush album is a little like asking parents to pick their favourite kid. A perfectionist who infused an American cultural import with the meticulousness of his own culture, the Japanese producer was the Far East’s answer to DJ Shadow, and together they would become Mo’ Wax’s flagship artists. On Meiso he dug for samples and looped them with the same precision, sensitivity and attention to detail as the finest calligrapher or ukiyo-e artist. The addition of CL Smooth, The Roots’ Black Thought and Malik B as well as Big Shug and Guru showed that trip-hop’s instrumental aesthetic could also provide the backdrop for some fine rap moments.

11. David Holmes Let’s Get Killed (Go! Beat, 1997)

For his second album, Belfast’s David Holmes walked around New York on acid recording voices and sounds. The results were weaved into the music for Let’s Get Killed which, like his 1995 debut, acts as a sort of soundtrack for an imaginary movie. The process also resulted in one of the best albums of the era – a psychedelic collage of rhythms, textures and styles that jumps between hip-hop, dub and dance music and rests on the back of Holmes’ urban trip.  Let’s Get Killed  has aged gracefully and still sounds just as engrossing as it did nearly 20 years ago.

10. DJ Spooky Songs of a Dead Dreamer (Asphodel, 1996)

Say what you like about Spooky and his over-explanation (those liner notes) and academic slant, Songs of a Dead Dreamer might sound better now than it did back in 1996. Hobbled at the time by the “illbient” tag, Spooky had come to the same conclusions as many of his European contemporaries: that a blend of hip-hop rhythms, dub bass and ambient soundscapes sounded pretty damn inspiring. Songs of a Dead Dreamer is his crowning achievement, and while its construction is relatively simple – loops fed through Spooky’s desk and piped through various effects – the effect is hypnotic and beguiling. While others may have pilfered from dub at a surface level, Spooky was using the Jamaican techniques (mixing board trickery, tape delay etc) to produce alien soundscapes that were a million miles from the comparatively safe sounds of Up, Bustle and Out or Funki Porcini.

9. DJ Cam Abstract Manifesto (P-Vine, 1996)

Soon after his debut in 1994, Paris’s DJ Cam positioned himself as the European equivalent to DJ Krush and DJ Shadow – a hip-hop enthusiast capable of weaving together abstract, blunted beats with finesse. Within a few years, he’d parlayed his underground kudos for an attempt at more standard rap fare. Abstract Manifesto is one of his lesser-known releases, a Japan-only album that tapped into the same minimal approach as Krush with added jazz flourishes and junglistic detours. ‘No Competition’ remains one of his best compositions to date, and a staple of sets from the era.

8. Major Force West 93-97 (Mo’ Wax, 1999)

It’s testament to the power of the ideas underpinning trip-hop at the time that this list includes an album spearheaded by a Japanese pop musician who had a hand in the new wave movement. Major Force was the name of Toshio Nakanishi’s hip-hop project, originally conceived in 1988 after a near-decade long infatuation with the music. Comprised of Nakanishi and former Melon bandmates Gota Yashiki and Masayuki Kudo, Major Force released new material as well as an anthology titled The Original Art-Form on Mo’ Wax in the mid-to-late 1990s. The latter is well worth your time, featuring early work and collaborations with Bristol’s DJ Milo, another link in the global thread that supported the music’s most daring leaps. In a 2014 interview, Nakanishi admitted that his fascination with hip-hop stemmed from recognising its links with Burroughs’ cut-ups, stating that “in collage, something happens where you never expected it to.”

93-97 compiles the group’s work during their years living in London, hence the twist to their name. It’s a brilliant and bizarre collection of ideas from a culturally out-of-place trio, who got it because they were so far from the “it” everyone was talking about. In those same years, Nakanishi and Kudo also worked as part of Skylab and you can hear similarities in this collection with the latter’s #1 debut album, especially in how the best of it isn’t the downtempo beats but the drawn-out compositions which have the feel of improvised studio jams. Later on in his interview, Nakanishi points out that London, at the time, felt as psychedelic as the 1960s, with the group seeking to inject some of this spirit into hip-hop, which in England was called trip-hop.

7. Various Artists Headz 2 (Mo’ Wax, 1996)

Just as the first Headz marked Mo’ Wax’s ascendance, the second compilation crowned its achievements and enshrined its best-known artists in an expansive collection of 53 tracks. While the first volume feels a little dated, Headz 2 has aged remarkably well, in part thanks to its broad representation of what trip-hop could be and where it came from. That means music from the Beastie Boys, UNKLE, Money Mark, The Black Dog, Dillinja, DJ Shadow, Danny Breaks, Tortoise and Urban Tribe among many. Headz 2 is also testament to James Lavelle’s impeccable A&R skills, and his talent for making sense of the various 1990s post-rave threads that informed the music.

6. Leila Like Weather (Rephlex, 1998)

Leila Arab’s debut album stuck out like a sore thumb when it appeared on Rephlex in 1998. Not because it was more extreme than Rephlex’s usual fare, but because it was actually a proper album, with songs, a narrative and little of the label’s usual tongue-in-cheek antics. Arab had pieced together a hazy, underwater daydream of a record with half-heard soul, pop and chiming ice cream truck electronics swirling together in a soup of memory and emotion. Not quite trip-hop and not quite illbient, it certainly wasn’t IDM either, despite an intriguing “post production” credit from a certain Richard D. James. It’s one of the most disarming records of the era, and manages to fulfil the promise of trip-hop without succumbing to its trappings. Like Weather might be the one record on this list that has the most in common with Maxinquaye , and that should tell you something about its quality.

5. Luke Vibert Big Soup (Mo’ Wax, 1997)

Luke Vibert’s first record under his real name, Big Soup summed up the Mo’ Wax catalogue perfectly, even if Vibert was only casually adjacent to the scene. Maybe that helped, as his productions have stood the test of time, sitting somewhere in between the sample-rich collages of DJ Shadow and the tight, precise constructions of DJ Krush and Major Force. The thing that Vibert had and which many of his peers always lacked was a sense of humour, and as track titles like ‘No Turn Unstoned’ might suggest, that helped remove some of the inherent pretentiousness of the scene, breaking down another barrier that walled it off to potential listeners. Vibert’s produced more complicated records since, and he’s produced more successful records too, but Big Soup is a perfect picture of a certain moment in time, painted with a British eccentricity that cuts through the posturing that would later derail the scene.

4. Massive Attack Blue Lines (Island, 1991)

In a 1998 feature for The New York Times , Guy Garcia posited Blue Lines as the blueprint for trip-hop, an argument that holds some weight if you consider that parts of the album were as old as the days of The Wild Bunch, from which the trio emerged. Blue Lines made its mark thanks to a mix of ideas: England’s love affair with sound systems; the comedown from its own summer of love in 1989; and hip-hop’s nascent dominance and rapacious aesthetic. Blue Lines was all of these things and more. Whether or not you consider it trip-hop is at this point in time purely a matter of personal beliefs and largely irrelevant considering its legacy. In 2009, Daddy G told The Observer : “What we were trying to do was create dance music for the head, rather than the feet.” A statement of intent for trip-hop if there ever was one.

3. DJ Shadow Endtroducing (Mo’ Wax, 1996)

DJ Shadow’s first album for Mo’ Wax is the kind of debut that places the bar so high in its mastery of a new musical vocabulary that even its creator can never hope to better it, forever living beneath the weight of what he’s accomplished. Endtroducing is the lingua franca of trip-hop, an album crafted by a hip-hop fanatic outside of any direct sphere of influence but his own. Like all of the releases on this list, to define Endtroducing as trip-hop is to limit it, to take away the transformative powers it had to imbue listeners with a new understanding of the potentials of hip-hop as an instrumental music. It’s not just the music that made hip-hop suck in 1996, it was also the critics who couldn’t conceive that albums like Endtroducing were what they claimed to be and nothing more.

2. Portishead Dummy (Go! Beat, 1994)

Portishead’s 1994 debut was soaked in the same DIY, melting pot approach that typified much of Bristol’s output at the time. From Massive Attack to Smith & Mighty and early Full Cycle releases, the city’s greatest hits in that decade were all about the blending of aesthetics with a brazen irreverence for rules. As a result the music felt both impossible and irresistible. Two decades on, Dummy still sounds as hypnotic and engrossing as it did then, a gritty take on hip-hop, 1960s movie soundtracks and traditional songwriting that laid bare the potentials afforded by sidestepping rigid genre formats.

1. Tricky Maxinquaye (Island, 1995)

This is the one, really. Tricky named his debut solo album after his mother, Maxine Quaye, and that should already indicate just how personal the record is. He’d sharpened his skills as a member of Massive Attack (indeed some of his rhymes from Blue Lines were recycled here), but his solo material went far beyond his former collaborators’ scope. Tricky was pulling from a darker well, and allowed his struggles, both external and internal, to sit at the album’s epicentre. The result was some of the most tortured and original electronic music cut to wax which gave birth to an era where “weird” became fashionable.

He was assisted by his then-girlfriend Martina Topley-Bird, whose nonchalant purrs offered a foil for Tricky’s hoarse raps. She was the smooth to Tricky’s tab-addled rough, and grounded the project for many listeners, no doubt helping people to lump it in with the similarly located Portishead.

Tricky hated being labeled trip-hop (“This is not a coffee table album. I don’t think you can have dinner parties to it,” he stated in 1996) and has rallied against it ever since, but there can be no argument that, for better or for worse, he left an indelible mark on British music, electronic and otherwise. If covering Public Enemy’s racially charged ‘Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos’ and recasting Chuck D as a mixed-race female from Bristol (singing, instead of rapping) isn’t hitting the genre’s conceit squarely in the face, we’re not sure what is. “If I supposedly invented it, why not call it Tricky-hop?” he said, before releasing Pre-Millenium Tension . He wasn’t wrong.

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Please support us by disabling your ad blocker on our site., hell is round the corner: an autopsy of trip-hop, let's discuss the record–scratching, tear–jerking, soul–sucking vibes of the '90's greatest export..

Close your eyes. Imagine, if you can, what the '90s were like. Not the literal day–to–day hustle and bustle, but the general mood. It's the middle of the night, and you're walking down a street. Sewer fumes obscure your vision, but it doesn't matter, because you haven't decided where you're walking to yet. Your baggy jeans and Nirvana tee are fashionably grimy, covered in tiny circular burns and beer stains. You take a long, last drag of your dying cigarette before stamping out the embers, extinguishing the final light of the dark alley you just turned down. Your headphones drown out the incessant rumblings of city life: ever so slowly, the hiss and crackle of vinyl pops fade in, washing out your ears like auditory smoke. "Give me a reason to love you," the lead singer croons over a wailing guitar solo.

In the '90s, one sound reigned supreme: the powerfully dark, noir–influenced vibes of trip–hop. I was born in 1999—I missed out on the actual experiences of the '90s—but there's something about trip–hop that allows us to tap into the zeitgeist of decades past in a way that a lot of genres can't do. The music is foreign yet instantly familiar; it's dingy, minimal, slow, gritty, and ever so sexual, yet it exists solely in a different era. Trip–hop sounds like an after–hours event at an after–hours nightclub, when all of the uppers have worn off and the intoxicating aura of lethargic exhaustion clings to the sweat–soaked floors.

Trip–hop started and ended in Bristol, England. In the early 1980s, a sound system , t he Wild Bunch , started making waves in the Bristol underground scene. By fusing together a massive range of genres (especially old punk, R&B, and reggae records) to create tired, washed–out beats, they developed an entirely new style of music: trip–hop. Key members of the Wild Bunch included—among many others— Tricky and Robert Del Naja .

Del Naja, Tricky, and a few other members of the collective eventually formed Massive Attack. Their first album, Blue Lines , came out in 1991 and essentially laid the foundations of the genre in the mainstream. Their most notable album, though, is 1998's Mezzanine . They've released a few other records since then (their last one, Heligoland , came in 2010), but the decline of Massive Attack more or less marked the decline of trip–hop.

Tricky left Massive Attack at some point after its inception, and began releasing his own solo material. His 1995 album, Maxinquaye , was a landmark release for trip–hop. The music on Maxinquaye ranges from industrial rock remixes of Public Enemy tracks to chill–inducing, melodramatic displays of vocal acrobatics. Trip–hop sounds like a lot of things, and Maxinquaye was a reminder that above all else, trip–hop was as secretive and sensual as a midnight hook–up.

The third notable trip–hop pioneer is Portishead. Though they don't have any formal ties to the Wild Bunch, their 1994 album, Dummy , is widely regarded as the definitive trip–hop album, firmly cementing the collection of sounds and influences into a coherent genre. They've released just two other albums since then— Portishead in 1997, and Third in 2008—but are more or less inactive now.

Tricky, then, is the only member of this unholy trinity of trip–hop troublemakers who still consistently releases music. To be frank, his new stuff isn't good. It's still trip–hop, sure, but it hasn't translated well to 2020. His latest album, Fall to Pieces , makes for an especially embarrassing listen. How could one of the progenitors of the style misunderstand it on such a fundamental level, only three decades later? For Tricky, the minimal aesthetics of the genre have given way to unfinished beats, boring melodies, uninspired samples, and lifeless vocals. It seems he's mistaking whispered platitudes of edginess for genuine gloominess and slow, boring drums for feelings of cultural malaise. The one track worth listening to, "Running Off," still offers nothing of note other than a slightly interesting beat.

That's it, then. Trip–hop is officially dead; its creators have either abandoned the sound, given up, or can no longer inspire similar feelings of genuine dread that carried the music through the '90s. There haven't been any significant revivals like other genres have seen, and none of the smaller acts that filled out the Massive Attack/Tricky/Portishead trinity gained large enough followings to survive. It will forever be a relic of the past, a cultural touchstone for an era gone by.

The one artist still maintaining the dark, grimy aesthetics of the genre, while releasing incredibly malaise music, is Sevdaliza . Iranian–born and Amsterdam–residing, Sevdaliza released her sophomore album, Shabrang , the same day Tricky's Fall to Pieces came out. Where Tricky's effort was boring and uninspired, Sevdaliza's album is just as experimental as it is an homage to trip–hop's heyday.

"Rhode," for example, draws directly from Portishead's Third , culminating in a disturbing instrumental break that carries the demented fury of a circular saw slicing through bone. Other songs on Shabrang reference trip–hop in a similarly direct way: "All Rivers At Once" is a slow–burning, moody guitar jam; "Lamp Lady" uses a dusty, downtempo drum sample; "No Way," "Habibi," and "Gole Bi Goldoon" showcase Sevdaliza's versatile soprano vocals in a way that rings eerily similar to Portishead's Beth Gibbons.

Discussing trip–hop in the present tense is a futile task. The genre peaked decades ago, and despite notable newcomers like Sevdaliza still showcasing different, innovative sounds, trip–hop will forever remain a window into the sights and sounds of the 90s. Let it die a dignified death: we can always spin our favorite records again, but we can't as easily repair a tarnished legacy.

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Exploring Trip Hop: A Sonic Journey through Definition, History, and Influential Artists

Table of Contents

Introduction

In the vast realm of music genres, one that stands out as an enigmatic and evocative entity is trip hop. This genre, characterized by its blend of electronic beats, downtempo rhythms, and a myriad of atmospheric elements, has left an indelible mark on the music landscape. From its humble beginnings to its widespread influence, trip hop has captured the hearts of listeners and continues to intrigue new generations. This article embarks on an exploratory journey through the essence of trip hop, delving into its definition, tracing its historical roots and development, exploring related genres, and highlighting influential bands and albums that have defined the genre.

Defining the Trip Hop Sound

At its core, trip hop is a genre that defies easy categorization. It’s a hybrid sound that emerged from the electronic and hip-hop scenes, blending together an eclectic range of influences. Trip hop is known for its downtempo beats, often hovering around 90 to 110 BPM, creating a relaxed yet engaging sonic experience. It marries electronic production techniques with elements of hip-hop, jazz, soul, and ambient music, resulting in a moody and atmospheric sound that can transport listeners to otherworldly realms.

The term “trip hop” itself is believed to have been coined by journalist Andy Pemberton in a review of the album “Dummy” by Portishead in 1994. The name aptly captures the genre’s ability to take listeners on a mental journey, often accompanied by a contemplative or introspective mood.

Tracing the Roots: The History and Development

The Origins: The inception of trip hop can be traced back to the early 1990s, when the city of Bristol, UK, served as a fertile ground for musical experimentation. This city’s underground club scene became a breeding ground for innovative artists seeking to break free from conventional genre boundaries. The influences of hip-hop’s rhythmic intricacies, dub’s textural richness, and the nascent electronic music culture converged, giving birth to a sound that defied categorization.

Massive Attack: Pioneering the Sound: A name that stands tall in the annals of trip hop history is Massive Attack. The release of their debut album “Blue Lines” in 1991 marked a pivotal moment for the genre’s evolution. This groundbreaking work introduced a mesmerizing blend of smooth rhythms, soulful vocal samples, and an urban aura. Tracks like “Unfinished Sympathy” encapsulated the genre’s potential to resonate emotionally while delivering intricate production techniques.

Portishead’s “Dummy”: Redefining Trip Hop: The year 1994 witnessed a significant turning point with the release of Portishead’s “Dummy.” This album not only redefined trip hop but also garnered acclaim that extended far beyond its genre’s boundaries. The haunting vocals of Beth Gibbons, paired with Geoff Barrow’s meticulous production, created an atmosphere that was both dark and cinematic. Tracks like “Sour Times” and “Glory Box” showcased the album’s ability to evoke deep emotions through its fusion of melancholic melodies and inventive production.

Tricky’s Gritty Edge: Tricky, a collaborator on Massive Attack’s “Blue Lines,” emerged as another defining figure in the genre’s development. His debut album “Maxinquaye” (1995) brought a gritty and experimental edge to trip hop. Tricky’s unique blend of hip-hop, punk , dub, and industrial music elements presented a darker and more enigmatic side of the genre. The album’s amalgamation of haunting vocals and dissonant textures resonated with those seeking a more unconventional sonic experience.

Bristol Sound and Urban Aesthetics: The emergence of the “Bristol Sound” emphasized the city’s pivotal role in shaping trip hop. This subgenre embraced a more diverse sonic palette, blending elements of trip hop with reggae, funk, and even rock . Acts like Portishead, Massive Attack, and Tricky exemplified the urban aesthetics that characterized Bristol Sound, where introspection met urban decay in a mesmerizing sonic landscape.

Diverse Inspirations and Global Influence

DJ Shadow’s Sonic Mosaic: The United States made its mark on the trip hop landscape with the emergence of DJ Shadow. His debut album “Endtroducing…..” (1996) revolutionized sampling and manipulation techniques, crafting an entire album from a rich tapestry of samples. This intricate sonic mosaic showcased trip hop’s potential to create immersive experiences that blurred the lines between composition and collage.

Traversing Cultural Boundaries: While the genre found its roots in the UK and the US, it transcended geographical borders. DJ Krush, hailing from Japan, added a distinctive Eastern flavor to trip hop. His album “Meiso” (1995) skillfully merged traditional Japanese sounds with the genre’s characteristic beats, resulting in an album that resonated with a global audience.

Influential Artists and Defining Albums

The landscape of trip hop is adorned with visionary artists who have not only defined the genre but also reshaped the contours of modern music. Their groundbreaking albums remain as milestones that continue to resonate with audiences across the globe.

Massive Attack – “Mezzanine” (1998): Building upon their previous successes, Massive Attack’s “Mezzanine” stands as a testament to their evolution and innovation. The album’s dark and brooding atmosphere, coupled with its intricate production, showcased the band’s ability to capture emotions through sound. Tracks like “Teardrop” featuring Elizabeth Fraser are prime examples of how Massive Attack expertly combined ethereal vocals with hypnotic beats to craft an otherworldly experience.

Tricky – “Maxinquaye” (1995): Tricky’s debut album, “Maxinquaye,” emerged as a force that defied conventions. This album, named after his late mother, delved into the depths of his emotional psyche, resulting in a sonic tapestry that intertwined trip hop with elements of punk, dub, and soul. Tracks like “Hell is Round the Corner” epitomize Tricky’s ability to infuse raw emotion into his music, blurring the lines between genres and leaving an indelible mark on the genre’s history.

Portishead – “Dummy” (1994): Portishead’s debut album “Dummy” not only gave the genre its name but also etched their name in trip hop history. The album’s haunting beauty, juxtaposed with melancholic undertones, created an atmospheric landscape that left listeners captivated. Songs like “Glory Box” and “Sour Times” showcased Beth Gibbons’ distinctive voice and the band’s mastery of tension and release, setting the bar for emotional depth within trip hop.

Morcheeba – “Big Calm” (1998): Morcheeba’s sophomore effort “Big Calm” epitomized the genre’s ability to fuse electronic beats with soulful melodies. Skye Edwards’ sultry vocals combined with lush arrangements, producing an album that perfectly encapsulated the laid-back yet emotionally charged essence of trip hop. Tracks like “The Sea” and “Part of the Process” exemplify Morcheeba’s signature sound that resonated with a wide audience.

DJ Shadow – “Endtroducing…..” (1996): DJ Shadow’s debut album “Endtroducing…..” rewrote the rules of sampling and composition. This instrumental masterpiece showcased his expertise in crafting intricate sonic collages from an extensive range of samples. The album’s immersive quality and attention to detail earned it a place among the most influential records in trip hop history, inspiring a generation of electronic music producers.

UNKLE – “ Psyence Fiction ” (1998): UNKLE, spearheaded by James Lavelle, delivered a genre-defying experience with “Psyence Fiction.” Collaborations with diverse artists like Thom Yorke of Radiohead and Richard Ashcroft of The Verve resulted in an album that pushed the boundaries of trip hop. Tracks like “Rabbit in Your Headlights” combined haunting vocals with intricate electronic arrangements, reflecting UNKLE’s exploration of the genre’s sonic potential.

Legacy and Beyond

The enduring influence of these artists and their defining albums has paved the way for future generations of musicians and producers. As the genre continues to evolve, the spirit of experimentation and sonic exploration remains at its core. From the introspective moods crafted by Portishead to the experimental fusion of Tricky and the sonic landscapes painted by Massive Attack, the legacy of these influential artists is a testament to the lasting impact of trip hop on the world of music.

Continued Influence and Modern Resonance

Chillwave’s Dreamy Revival: In the 2000s and beyond, trip hop’s influence reverberated across genres like chillwave . Acts like Washed Out and Tycho incorporated trip hop’s dreamy soundscapes into their own music, infusing it with modern electronic sensibilities. This revival demonstrated the enduring appeal of trip hop’s atmospheric allure.

Lo-fi Hip Hop’s Digital Oasis: The digital age ushered in a new era of lo-fi hip hop beats, often accompanied by captivating visuals. These beats drew heavily from trip hop’s relaxed rhythms, offering a backdrop for study sessions, relaxation, and contemplation. Online platforms became havens for these beats, with creators curating seamless mixes that captured the essence of trip hop’s tranquility.

Unraveling Trip Hop’s Legacy

As the journey through trip hop’s rich history unfolds, it becomes clear that the genre is far more than a musical classification. It’s a tapestry of diverse influences, a testament to the power of sonic exploration. From Massive Attack’s pioneering endeavors to Tricky’s enigmatic soundscapes and Portishead’s emotional depth, trip hop has left an indelible mark on the world of music. Its evolution continues to inspire artists across genres, reminding us that music’s capacity for innovation knows no bounds. Whether experienced in dimly lit clubs or through headphones in quiet solitude, trip hop invites us to traverse its textured landscapes and embark on a sonic journey that defies conventions and expectations.

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The Best Downtempo Bands/Artists

Downtempo artists list, with photos, ranked best to worst by votes. List of good downtempo bands includes a filter so you can sort by the groups’s label and what albums they've put out. This list of the top downtempo bands in the world includes all musicians who have released recordings that have gotten distribution, and is an up-to-date list. Downtempo groups and artists are shown below along with any additional genres in which their music belongs. If available, you can also see information about where all downtempo bands on this list got started. These are truly the greatest downtempo bands of all time, since the most famous downtempo artists ever are listed, and the order is decided by actual fans of the best downtempo music.

You can click on the downtempo band names to see more information about that particular notable downtempo group. If they're near the top of the best downtempo artist list, though, then they should have at least some information available. All the top downtempo bands named on the list also have discographies on their pages if you click on the downtempo band names themselves.

Use every item on this list for yours, from Joel Thomas Zimmerman to Tiësto. Make sure to downvote the worst teams/people, because they have it coming. Downvote the artists you like the least, like Portishead or Björk. If you do like them, then vote them up.

All important, significant and iconic names in downtempo music history deserve your votes, so make sure to choose wisely. You can only vote once on this list.

The list includes all new downtempo bands, and if there are any missing on the list, you can always add them yourself. Just make sure they aren't already on the list and check your spelling, because this is already an accurate compilation of the best examples of downtempo, as well as a good place to start if you're asking yourself, or friends, exactly how to get into downtempo music. Especially since the bands at the top of the list will at the very least be the best choices if you're looking for a list of good downtempo bands with which to start out. No point in listening to them if they aren't actually good or even half-way decent downtempo bands.

This list answers the questions "who are the best downtempo bands of all time?" and "who is the greatest downtempo musician ever?"

If you know enough about the genre, please vote based on the quality of the band's music instead of just voting for the most popular downtempo bands that you might've heard of, but not really listened to closely enough to cast an informed vote.

Massive Attack

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20 Dark And Challenging Hip Hop Albums For The Adventurous Listener

Hip Hop has always been a genre that pushes boundaries and challenges conventional thinking. From the early days of Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five to the present day, artists have used their voices to speak out against oppression and to shed light on social issues. But some artists take this challenge to another level, pushing the limits of what we expect from the genre both sonically and lyrically. They’ve created albums that are dark, moody, and challenging, requiring the listener to delve deeper and really engage with the music to truly appreciate the experience.

Most of the albums on this list are known for their dark themes and lyrics, exploring topics such as depression, addiction, and social injustice. They often eschew the mainstream sound and instead opt for experimental production techniques, incorporating elements of jazz, industrial, and noise music to create a haunting and otherworldly atmosphere. While some of these albums may be an acquired taste, they are all worth listening to for the sheer creative ambition and fearlessness of their creators to take risks and explore new sonic territories. For the adventurous listener, these albums offer a window into the limitless possibilities of Hip Hop music. Let’s get into it: 20 dark and challenging Hip Hop albums for the adventurous listener.

Organized Konfusion – Stress: The Extinction Agenda (1994)

After the critical acclaim their self-titled debut album received, Organized Konfusion had to follow up with an album that lived up to the high standards they had set for themselves. With  Stress: The Extinction Agenda , they not only delivered an album with similarities to their debut but also ventured into uncharted territories with their innovative approach. Pharoahe Monch and Prince Po’s lyricism on this album is unmatched, and their ability to craft intricate rhymes is a testament to their skills as emcees. The album’s dark, dense, and intellectual themes are still relevant today, and its vision and execution were way ahead of their time. Unlike some albums from the era,  Stress: The Extinction Agenda  seemingly hasn’t aged a day and sounds as fresh today as it did on the day it was released, making it a classic that has stood the test of time.

Stress: The Extinction Agenda  features the lyrical prowess of Pharoahe Monch and Prince Po, who deliver some of the most complex and thought-provoking rhymes in the genre. Their lyrics are dense and intellectual, touching on themes such as the struggles of life in the inner city, oppression, gun violence, and survival. They tackle these heavy subject matters with a finesse that is unmatched in the genre.

One of the album’s standout tracks is “ Stress ,” which sets the tone for the rest of the album with its ominous beat and raw lyrics. The track touches on the daily stresses faced by those living in the inner city, such as poverty, violence, and addiction. Pharoahe Monch and Prince Po trade verses effortlessly, their flows complementing each other perfectly. Other highlights of the album include “The Extinction Agenda,” a powerful track that delves into the struggle for survival in a world filled with oppression with a beat that is dark and foreboding, setting the perfect tone for the hard-hitting lyrics, and “Black Sunday,” a commentary on the effects of institutional racism on the black community – the track’s beat is haunting, perfectly matching the somber tone of the lyrics. Pharoahe Monch and Prince Po’s verses are raw and emotional, painting a vivid picture of the pain and suffering caused by racism.

“Stray Bullet” perhaps is the most powerful track on the album due to its poignant commentary on the devastating impact of gun violence. The song tells the story of a stray bullet’s journey, beginning from the gun that fires it and tracing its trajectory to the innocent victim it ultimately hits. The song’s vivid storytelling and powerful imagery convey the senselessness of gun violence, capturing the pain and suffering it inflicts on individuals and communities. The song’s message is particularly relevant today as gun violence continues to be a major issue in America. The lyrics of “Stray Bullet” urge listeners to consider the impact of guns on society and the need for greater gun control measures. The track is a call to action to stop the senseless loss of lives due to gun violence and to promote a safer, more peaceful society.

In addition to the elite lyricism, the beats on  Stress: The Extinction Agenda  are just as noteworthy. The album’s mostly self-produced instrumentals are dark, jazzy, and menacing, perfectly complementing the lyrical style of Pharoahe Monch and Prince Po. The beats on the album are some of the most innovative and complex in the genre, adding an extra layer of depth to an already impressive album.

What sets  Stress: The Extinction Agenda  apart from other albums of its time is its sheer originality. It’s an uncompromising and unapologetic work that demands the listener’s full attention. It’s an album that rewards multiple listens, with new layers of meaning and complexity revealed each time. Overall,  Stress: The Extinction Agenda  is an album that has aged incredibly well. It doesn’t sound dated or out of touch with the times; instead, it feels just as fresh and innovative today as it did when it was first released. It’s a testament to the vision and skill of Organized Konfusion, who managed to create an album that was ahead of its time in both vision and execution.

In conclusion,  Stress: The Extinction Agenda  is a classic Hip Hop album that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as other timeless works of the genre. It’s an album that showcases the very best Hip Hop has to offer, from its complex and thought-provoking lyrics to its innovative and groundbreaking beats. The album’s themes of survival, struggle, and perseverance are still relevant today, making  Stress: The Extinction Agenda  a timeless work of art that you simply can’t afford to miss.

Cannibal Ox – The Cold Vein (2001)

Cannibal Ox’s debut album, The Cold Vein , is a Hip Hop masterpiece that has stood the test of time. Released in 2001, the album is produced entirely by El-P and features dense, intricate beats that perfectly complement the dense, intricate lyrics of MCs Vast Aire and Vordul Mega.

The opening track “Iron Galaxy”  sets the tone for the entire album with its dark and dystopian vibe. Vast Aire and Vordul Mega trade intricate verses over El-P’s experimental beat, which features distorted samples and heavy bass. The lyrics touch on themes of war, apocalypse, and societal decay, setting the stage for the rest of the album’s bleak worldview. Another highlight is “Pigeon”, one of the most emotional tracks on the album, featuring Vordul Mega’s introspective verses about growing up in poverty and struggling to survive. El-P’s production is sparse and atmospheric, adding to the song’s eerie vibe.

But perhaps the most impressive aspect of The Cold Vein is the way it creates a vivid, dystopian world through its lyrics and production. El-P’s production is dense and layered, with industrial sounds and eerie melodies creating an otherworldly atmosphere. Meanwhile, Vast Aire and Vordul Mega’s lyrics paint a picture of a society in decay, where poverty, violence, and corruption are the norm.

Overall, The Cold Vein is a dark and challenging album that rewards careful listening. It’s an album that demands your attention and rewards you for it, with intricate lyrics and dense, layered production that create a vivid and haunting world. If you’re an adventurous listener looking for something a bit different, The Cold Vein is well worth your time.

Dälek – From Filthy Tongue Of Gods And Griots (2002)

Dälek’s From Filthy Tongue Of Gods And Griots is a groundbreaking album in the experimental Hip Hop genre. The New Jersey crew, comprised of MC Dälek, Oktopus, and the late DJ Still, offers a challenging and unconventional sound that will appeal to those looking for something outside the mainstream.

The album’s production features a blend of boom-bap style beats, noisy soundscapes, and unorthodox instrumentation that creates a unique atmosphere that is both menacing and entrancing. From the opening track, “Spiritual Healing”, Dälek sets the tone for what is to come with a disorienting mix of distorted beats and eerie vocal samples.

MC Dälek’s lyrics are dense and thought-provoking, touching on themes of social justice, politics, and the human condition. He delivers his verses with a commanding presence, his deep voice cutting through the noisy production to drive home his message. His words are at times abstract, but the emotion and passion behind them are palpable.

From Filthy Tongue Of Gods And Griots is an album that demands careful attention and deep exploration. The album’s unconventional production and complex lyrics may be challenging for some, but those who are willing to dig in will find a rich and rewarding experience. Dälek was ahead of their time with this album, creating a classic in the industrial Hip Hop subgenre that still sounds fresh and innovative today.

El-P - Fantastic Damage (2002)

In 2002, El-P released Fantastic Damage , an album that redefined the possibilities of underground Hip Hop . The album’s production is dense, abrasive, and incredibly layered, built around a mixture of live instrumentation and samples from a wide range of sources. El-P creates a sound that’s both futuristic and retro at the same time, with a sonic landscape that’s equal parts menacing and mesmerizing.

But it’s not just the production that sets Fantastic Damage apart – it’s also El-P’s lyrical prowess. His rhymes are complex, dense, and almost impenetrable at times, with references to everything from sci-fi novels to political theory. El-P’s flow is also unique, with his rapid-fire delivery and unconventional cadences adding to the album’s already-dizzying complexity.

The album’s themes are also worth discussing. Like Cannibal Ox’s The Cold Vein , Fantastic Damage is a bleak and dystopian work, with El-P painting a picture of a world on the brink of collapse. His lyrics touch on everything from police brutality and government corruption to personal struggles with addiction and depression. It’s heavy stuff, but it’s also incredibly compelling, with El-P’s vision of a near-future world gone wrong feeling scarily prescient even today.

One of the most impressive things about Fantastic Damage is how well it’s held up over time. The album was groundbreaking when it was released, and its influence can be heard in countless underground and experimental Hip Hop artists. The album is still considered a classic of the genre by many, and its themes and sounds remain as relevant today as they were in 2002.

For any Hip Hop fan with an interest in the more experimental and avant-garde side of the genre, Fantastic Damage is an essential listen. El-P’s production and lyricism are both top-notch, and the album’s themes are as relevant today as they were when it was released. Fantastic Damage is a must if you’re looking for something dark, challenging, and unlike anything else out there.

Busdriver - Fear of a Black Tangent (2005)

Busdriver, born Regan Farquhar, is a rapper and producer known for his avant-garde approach to Hip Hop. Born in Los Angeles, California in 1978, Busdriver first gained attention in the early 2000s with a string of underground releases that showcased his complex lyrics and experimental production.

His Fear of a Black Tangent is an intellectual and socially conscious Hip Hop album that challenges the listener with its complex lyrics and experimental production. Released in 2005, the album combines Busdriver’s intricate wordplay and eclectic delivery with production that fuses elements of jazz, electronic, and classical music.

One standout track on the album is “Unemployed Black Astronaut,” a song that features Busdriver delivering a furious flow over an infectious beat. The track’s lyrics deal with themes of race, identity, and the struggles of being a Black artist in America. Another standout track is “Wormholes,” a song that features Busdriver’s stream-of-consciousness wordplay over a hypnotic beat that blends electronic and classical music.

The album’s themes of social injustice, political unrest, and racial identity are tackled head-on in tracks like “Avantcore,” a song that criticizes the music industry’s commodification of Black culture, and “Cool Band Buzz,” a track that explores the ways in which language is used to perpetuate stereotypes and maintain power dynamics.

Fear of a Black Tangent is an album that may not be as dark as some of the other albums on this list, but it certainly is a challenging one that demands careful listening and close examination, ultimately rewarding for those who are willing to engage with the material. Busdriver is an artist who is unafraid to take risks and push the boundaries of the genre, and Fear of a Black Tangent is a shining example of his creativity and vision.

Dälek - Absence (2005)

Dälek’s Absence , released in 2005, is widely considered one of their best works. From the opening track, “Distorted Prose,” it’s clear that this is not your average Hip Hop album. The production is dense and layered, with samples and noises that range from ominous drones to screeching feedback. MC Dälek’s lyrics are similarly abstract and thought-provoking, touching on themes of isolation, anxiety, and the search for meaning in a chaotic world.

One of the strengths of Absence is its ability to create a sense of unease and tension throughout its runtime. The beats are often oppressive, and the lyrics are heavy with a sense of foreboding. Yet, there is a sense of catharsis to be found in the music. Dälek’s lyrics are often confrontational and challenging, but they are also deeply personal and introspective. The result is an album that is both intellectually stimulating and emotionally affecting.

Absence is a landmark album in the experimental Hip Hop subgenre. The album is not an easy listen, but it is a deeply rewarding one. For those who are looking for something outside the mainstream, something challenging and thought-provoking, Absence is an essential listen.

Death Grips - The Money Store (2012)

Death Grips’s The Money Store is a ground-breaking album that showcases the group’s experimental approach to Hip Hop. Released in 2012, it features all original material and delivers an intense, aggressive, and confrontational sound that fuses elements of Hip Hop, punk, and industrial music.

The production on The Money Store is noteworthy and is handled by the group’s drummer Zach Hill, along with producer Andy Morin. The beats are noisy, chaotic, and abrasive, incorporating electronic music and heavy metal elements to push the boundaries of Hip Hop. The sound is futuristic, yet retro, and is unlike anything else in Hip Hop.

MC Ride, the group’s lead vocalist, is another highlight of The Money Store . He brings a raw, aggressive flow and confrontational lyrics to the album, creating a sense of tension and danger that permeates every track. He covers difficult subjects, such as political corruption, mental illness, and drug addiction, making the album both challenging and rewarding.

The Money Store is a challenging and confrontational listening experience. Despite its abrasive nature, it has received critical acclaim for its innovative sound and fearless approach to Hip Hop. It is an essential album for anyone interested in cutting-edge Hip Hop and experimental music. It defies categorization and blends elements of punk, industrial, and electronic music into a Hip Hop sound that is uniquely Death Grips. Whether you love it or hate it, The Money Store ‘s impact on alternative Hip Hop cannot be denied.

billy woods - History Will Absolve Me (2012)

The elusive billy woods is an underground rapper who has been making music since the early 2000s. Born in Washington D.C., he grew up in Africa and the West Indies and later moved to New York City, where he currently resides. woods is known for his dense, intricate rhymes and socially conscious lyrics, often tackling topics such as race, politics, and society’s ills.

In 2012, woods released History Will Absolve Me , a critically acclaimed album that solidified his place as one of the most thought-provoking and talented rappers in the underground scene. The album is a dark, brooding masterpiece that features production from a range of talented beatmakers, including Willie Green, Blockhead, and Marmaduke. The result is a unique sound that is both experimental and accessible, with a focus on dense, complex lyrics that require multiple listens to fully appreciate.

One of the standout tracks on the album is “Crocodile Tears,” which features a haunting, piano-driven beat. The song is a scathing indictment of the music industry and the hypocrisy of mainstream rappers who claim to care about social issues, but ultimately prioritize their own fame and fortune over real change. woods’ lyrics are biting and incisive, calling out the bogus solidarity of those who use their platform to spout empty slogans but refuse to take real action.

Another standout track is “Duck Hunt,” which features a jazzy, off-kilter beat that perfectly complements woods’ dense, stream-of-consciousness rhymes. The song is a meditation on the power of language and the ways in which it can be used to manipulate and control people. woods’ lyrics are dense and packed with references to literature, history, and pop culture, showcasing his intellect and mastery of the written word. Throughout the album, woods’ lyrical themes are often bleak and despairing, but he never succumbs to nihilism or hopelessness.

Overall, History Will Absolve Me is a powerful, thought-provoking album that showcases billy woods’ exceptional talent as a rapper and lyricist. The production is experimental and engaging, and the lyrics are dense and packed with meaning. While it may not be the most accessible album for casual listeners, those who take the time to delve into its depths will be rewarded with a rich and rewarding experience. In a time when so much of mainstream Hip Hop is dominated by empty, commercialized soundscapes, History Will Absolve Me still is a breath of fresh air, reminding us of the true power of the art form to inspire, challenge, and uplift.

El-P - Cancer 4 Cure (2012)

El-P’s Cancer 4 Cure is a dark and intense Hip Hop album that showcases the producer and MC’s unique blend of futuristic production and socially conscious lyrics. Released in 2012, the album is a testament to El-P’s ability to create dense, layered tracks that are both sonically engaging and intellectually stimulating.

One standout track on the album is “The Full Retard,” a song that features El-P’s aggressive flow over a beat that is equal parts chaotic and hypnotic. The track’s lyrics are a scathing critique of the state of modern society, with El-P skewering everything from consumer culture to political corruption. Another standout track is “Tougher Colder Killer,” a song that features guest appearances from Killer Mike and Despot. The track’s ominous production and gritty lyrics are a perfect example of El-P’s ability to create a sonic landscape that is simultaneously menacing and thought-provoking.

Throughout the album, El-P tackles themes of isolation, paranoia, and disillusionment, exploring the darker aspects of the human experience with unflinching honesty. Tracks like “Drones Over Brooklyn” and “The Jig Is Up” are powerful indictments of a society that has lost its way, with El-P’s lyrics serving as a wake-up call to those who are willing to listen.

Cancer 4 Cure’ s unconventional production and complex lyrics are not for the faint of heart, but for those who are willing to engage with the album’s content, the album is a deeply rewarding experience.  Cancer 4 Cure is an album that stands out for its uncompromising vision and intense sonic palette. El-P’s production is both otherworldly and grounded in reality, creating a unique sonic landscape that is both futuristic and deeply rooted in the present. The album’s themes of social and political unrest are as relevant today as they were when the album was released, making Cancer 4 Cure a powerful statement from an artist who continues to push the boundaries of Hip Hop.

Danny Brown - Old (2013)

Detroit’s Danny Brown is one of the most unique rappers out there. He got a one-of-a-kind voice that’s equal parts raspy and high-pitched, and he’s not afraid to experiment with different sounds and styles. His music often explores themes of drug addiction, poverty, and mental health, and his willingness to take risks and push boundaries has made him a respected and influential figure in the world of Hip Hop.

When it comes to Danny Brown’s discography, Old is an underrated gem that often gets overlooked in favor of his breakthrough sophomore album X X X (2011) or his classic Atrocity Exhibition (2016) album. But make no mistake, Old is an excellent album too, an album that is aging really well.

Released in 2013, Old sees Danny Brown at his most personal and introspective. Old is an album with very different sides, it’s like it is two albums in one. The first half of the 19 tracks show us an introspective and more serious Danny Brown who touches upon all kinds of his craziness and personal turmoil, the second half is not much less crazy in subject matter but is a little more lighthearted, consisting more of club bangers.

One of the standout tracks on the album is “25 Bucks,” a poignant track that explores the struggles of his mother’s financial hardships and his own experiences growing up in Detroit. The collaboration with Purity Ring’s Megan James adds an ethereal quality to the track.

Another highlight is “Torture,” which features production from Oh No and sees Brown rapping about the harsh realities of life in Detroit. “ Gunshots outside was sorta like fireworks / We know they ain’t fireworks, its December 21st / Cold winter with a kerosene heater on the couch so cold / Can’t take off your sneakers / And it’s torture / Look in my mind and see the horrors.. .”, he spits over a pulsating beat.

But perhaps the most impressive aspect of Old is Brown’s ability to seamlessly switch between different flows and styles. On “Dope Fiend Rental,” he raps in a rapid-fire cadence over a brooding beat, while on “Lonely,” he slows things down and delivers a more introspective and emotional performance.

Old is a dark and challenging album that sees Danny Brown at his most vulnerable and introspective. It’s an album that deserves more recognition than it gets and is a must-listen for any fan of experimental Hip Hop.

Earl Sweatshirt - Doris (2013)

Earl Sweatshirt, born Thebe Neruda Kgositsile in 1994 in Los Angeles, is an American rapper, songwriter, and producer. He first gained prominence as a member of the Hip Hop collective Odd Future, before embarking on a successful solo career. Doris , his 2013 debut album showcased his lyrical prowess and unique style, which combines gritty storytelling with experimental soundscapes.

Doris is an album that commands attention from the moment it begins. The opening track, “Pre,” sets the tone for the rest of the album with its grimy, experimental production and Earl’s introspective lyrics. From there, the album delves deep into Earl’s psyche, exploring themes of depression, isolation, and addiction. The beats on Doris are dark, complex, and often abrasive. They draw inspiration from a wide range of genres, including jazz, soul, and even punk rock. The result is a sound that is distinctly Earl’s own, and it perfectly complements the raw emotion of his lyrics.

One of the standout tracks on the album is “Chum,” which was also the album’s lead single. The song finds Earl grappling with his past and his troubled relationship with his father. The beat is minimalistic, consisting of little more than a piano riff and a drum loop, but it creates a haunting atmosphere that perfectly captures the mood of the lyrics. Earl’s flow is slow and deliberate, allowing the weight of his words to sink in. Another highlight is “Sunday,” which features a guest verse from Frank Ocean. The beat is built around a soulful sample and a steady drum pattern, and Earl’s lyrics touch on his struggles with addiction and the difficulties of maintaining relationships. Frank Ocean’s verse is a perfect complement to Earl’s, providing a different perspective on the same themes.

The album’s guest features are well-chosen and add to the album’s overall texture. Vince Staples, Tyler, The Creator, RZA, and Mac Miller all make appearances (among others), and each brings a unique energy to their respective tracks. But it is Earl who remains the star of the show, and his lyrics and delivery are what make Doris such a powerful listening experience.

Doris is an album that rewards multiple listens. On the surface, it may seem like a collection of dark, moody tracks, but there are layers to be uncovered. Earl’s lyrics are often cryptic and require close attention to fully understand. But the payoff is worth it. The album is a deeply personal exploration of Earl’s inner demons, and it provides a window into the mind of one of the most talented and enigmatic figures in modern Hip Hop.

The album can be overwhelming at times – the production is so dense and layered that it can be difficult to fully digest everything that is happening. But this is a minor quibble in the grand scheme of things: Earl Sweatshirt’s Doris is a low-key masterpiece. It’s experimental production and introspective lyrics set it apart from the pack, and Earl’s raw honesty and vulnerability make it a deeply affecting listening experience. The album is not for everyone, but for those who are willing to dive in and explore its depths, it is a gem.

Killah Priest – The Psychic World Of Walter Reed (2013)

Killah Priest is a Wu-Tang Clan affiliate from Brooklyn, New York. He first gained prominence in the mid-1990s with his appearances on Wu-Tang Clan’s solo albums, and his solo debut album Heavy Mental (1998). He has since released numerous solo albums, including The Psychic World of Walter Reed , which is considered one of his best works.

The Psychic World of Walter Reed is a dense and complex album that offers a unique and rewarding listening experience for those willing to delve into its 41 tracks. The album showcases Killah Priest’s signature style of cryptic observations and cosmic imagery mixed with street wisdom, delivered through his resonating baritone. The beats on this album are top-notch, with contributions from elite beat crafters like RZA and 4th Disciple, as well as lesser-known producers who deliver equally impressive production.

The Psychic World Of Walter Reed is an impressive achievement that showcases Killah Priest’s lyrical prowess and unique perspective. It’s not an album for everyone, as its length and heavy subject matter may be overwhelming for some listeners. But for those who are willing to take the time to dive into this behemoth project, it’s a rewarding and enlightening experience. Killah Priest proves that he’s one of the most talented and innovative artists in the extended Wu-Tang family, and The Psychic World Of Walter Reed is a testament to his skill and vision.

clipping. - CLPPNG (2014)

Clipping is a daring experimental Hip Hop trio hailing from Los Angeles, California, comprising rapper Daveed Diggs and producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes. Their debut studio album, CLPPNG , which followed their critically acclaimed midcity mixtape, is a sonic journey into the heart of darkness that is as thought-provoking as it is unsettling.

One of the most striking aspects of CLPPNG is the dense and disturbing lyrics delivered by Daveed Diggs. He explores the innermost feelings of the poor, the disenfranchised, and the gangbangers, painting a vivid picture of the harsh realities of life on the streets. His rhymes are raw, uncompromising, and captivating, leaving a deep impression on the listener long after the album has ended.

However, it’s the harsh and distorted production that truly sets CLPPNG apart from other Hip Hop records. The beats are gritty, abrasive, and atmospheric, featuring jarring soundscapes that transport the listener to a world of chaos and uncertainty. The trio experiments with unconventional sounds and textures, utilizing field recordings, found sounds, and glitchy samples to create a soundscape that’s as haunting as it is captivating.

CLPPNG is an album that demands attention, inviting the listener to explore the darkest corners of the human experience. The trio’s use of unconventional sounds and textures, along with Diggs’ dense and disturbing lyrics, creates a sonic landscape that’s as immersive as it is challenging, revealing new layers of meaning and depth with each spin. Despite its challenging nature, the album is one of clipping’s more accessible projects, making it a great starting point for those looking to explore the darker side of Hip Hop.

Death Grips - Bottomless Pit (2016)

Bottomless Pit is Death Grips’s fifth studio album. It was released in 2016 and is widely regarded as one of the group’s best as well as most intense and challenging albums to date.

The instrumentals on Bottomless Pit  are noisy, frenetic, and unpredictable, with elements of punk, industrial, and electronic music all thrown into the mix. The group’s drummer Zach Hill is once again responsible for the production, along with producer Andy Morin. The result is a sound that is unlike anything else in Hip Hop.

With his raw and aggressive flow, MC Ride delivers confrontational lyrics that touch on a wide range of subjects, including depression, anxiety, and societal decay. His delivery is unrelenting, and he often shifts between a whisper and a scream within the same verse. The combination of his intense delivery and the chaotic production creates a sense of urgency that permeates the entire album.

Bottomless Pit is also notable for its use of samples. The group incorporates samples from a variety of sources, including spoken word recordings and film dialogue, to add an extra layer of complexity to the already dense soundscapes. The samples are often manipulated and distorted, further contributing to the disorienting and unsettling nature of the album.

Despite its abrasive sound, Bottomless Pit has received critical acclaim for its innovative approach to Hip Hop. The album is challenging, but it rewards those who are willing to engage with its dense, multi-layered production and intense lyricism. Like all albums on this list, it is an album that demands repeat listens to fully appreciate its intricacies.

Bottomless Pit stands out as one of Death Grips’ most cohesive and focused albums. While the production is chaotic and unpredictable, there is a clear sense of purpose and intent behind every track. The album’s title is an apt description of the sound and vibe that Death Grips has created with this record. It’s an intense and disorienting journey into the depths of the human psyche, exploring themes of anxiety, paranoia, and existential dread. The album’s closing track, “Bottomless Pit,” brings the album to a fittingly chaotic and frenzied conclusion, leaving the listener feeling exhausted but exhilarated.

Bottomless Pit is a landmark album in Death Grips’ discography, and it’s an essential listen for anyone interested in innovative Hip Hop, incorporating elements of punk, industrial, and electronic music into what is a dark and challenging album, but also a rewarding one for those who are willing to dive deep into its complex and intense soundscapes.

Danny Brown - Atrocity Exhibition (2016)

Danny Brown’s Atrocity Exhibition is an exceptional album that showcases his unique style of rapping and cements his position as one of the most innovative and forward-thinking MCs in the Hip Hop genre. The album, released in 2016, explores themes of addiction, mental illness, and the struggles of being a black man in America.

One of the standout tracks on Atrocity Exhibition is “Ain’t It Funny,” where Danny Brown’s frantic flow is set against a chaotic beat that adds to the song’s dark and twisted vibe. The music video for this track, directed by Jonah Hill, perfectly captures the song’s mood. Brown’s ability to be introspective and entertaining at the same time is showcased in this track.

Another notable song on the album is “Pneumonia,” where Brown delivers his signature style of rapping over a horror movie-like beat. The track’s haunting production creates a sense of unease and contributes to the album’s overall dark tone. “Really Doe” is a standout posse cut that features some of the biggest names in modern Hip Hop, including Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul, and Earl Sweatshirt. All three artists bring their A-game and contribute to the song’s dark and atmospheric sound.

Atrocity Exhibition is a brilliant album that showcases Danny Brown’s artistic growth. The album’s themes, production, and unique style make it a must-have for any Hip Hop fan looking for an adventurous listening experience.

Armand Hammer - Paraffin (2018)

Armand Hammer is a duo composed of billy woods and Elucid, two Brooklyn-based rappers known for their dark, introspective, and politically charged lyrics. Both artists have made a name for themselves within the underground rap scene, with billy woods having released several critically acclaimed albums over the years. Their third album as a duo, Paraffin , released in 2018, is a masterpiece of experimental production and poetic lyricism, that further solidified their status as some of the most innovative voices in contemporary Hip Hop.

From the very first track, “Sweet Mickey”, it’s clear that this is not your typical Hip Hop album. The production is dark, heavy, and experimental, with eerie samples and off-kilter beats. The album is filled with abstract bars that reference politics, social justice, and the struggles of everyday life. Paraffin is a complex and challenging album, that rewards repeated listens. It’s not the kind of music that you can put on in the background, but rather, it demands your full attention, as you try to decipher the duo’s cryptic verses and make sense of the album’s dark and twisted production.

In a genre that often prioritizes flashy beats and catchy hooks, Armand Hammer stands out for their uncompromising vision and their commitment to pushing the boundaries of what Hip Hop can be. Paraffin is a testament to their creative prowess and a must-listen for anyone who’s looking for music that challenges and subverts expectations.

JPEGMAFIA - Veteran (2018)

Released in 2018, JPEGMAFIA’s Veteran features a blend of experimental beats and politically charged lyrics that create a unique and powerful listening experience. Veteran as a whole is a testament to JPEGMAFIA’s ability to push the genre boundaries of Hip Hop. The album’s production is experimental and daring, featuring a blend of distorted beats, samples, and unconventional soundscapes, an amalgamation of noise, glitch, and punk-rap styles. JPEGMAFIA’s flow is equally unique, with his unorthodox delivery adding to the album’s sense of unpredictability and intensity.

In addition to its experimental sound, Veteran is a politically charged album that tackles difficult and controversial topics. The lyrics of the songs touch on themes of police brutality, racism, and other political and social issues, making it a powerful statement on the current state of affairs.

One of the standout tracks on Veteran is “Real Nega,” which features a distorted beat and JPEGMAFIA’s aggressive flow. The lyrics of the song touch on themes like fascism,  feminism, and hipsterism, making it a politically charged statement that showcases JPEGMAFIA’s willingness to tackle difficult topics.

Another notable track on the album is “Baby I’m Bleeding,” where JPEGMAFIA’s unorthodox flow is set against a jarring and discordant beat. The lyrics of the song have Peggy on the attack, with nothing but quotable like “I’m at the white house, lookin’ for your president”, and “acting like a slave while I’m gunning for my master…”). The song’s production adds to its chaotic nature, creating a sense of unease in the listener.

“Thug Tears” is another standout track on the album, featuring a sample from pioneering electronic Hip Hop duo Mantronix. The lyrics of the song address the harsh realities of life on the street and the emotional toll it takes on people. Despite there being a few highlights, there are no real weak spots, the whole album is an immersive in-your-face experience, that’ll stay with you.

JPEGMAFIA’s Veteran is a challenging and thought-provoking album, its experimental production and politically charged lyrics make it a standout project that keeps listeners on their toes constantly. Veteran established JPEGMAFIAn as one of the most exciting and innovative voices in Hip Hop today, and it is an essential addition to any music lover’s collection.

clipping. - There Existed an Addiction to Blood (2019)

Clipping’s There Existed an Addiction to Blood is a bold and daring release that explores the horror genre and pushes the boundaries of Hip Hop. This album is not for the faint of heart and will undoubtedly divide listeners, but those who can appreciate the unapologetic experimentation and unrelenting darkness will find a masterpiece that is hard to forget.

Daveed Diggs proves himself to be a talented lyricist with strong and evocative imagery throughout the album. Production on this album is abrasive, dense, haunting, and eclectic, blending various genres to create a unique and immersive experience. The album begins with “Nothing Is Safe,” a track that serves as an introduction to the darkness that lies ahead. From there, it moves on to “Blood of the Fang,” which features a surreal and intense video that perfectly matches the mood of the track. “All In Your Head,” “La Mala Ordina” with Benny The Butcher and Elcamino, “Club Down,” and “Attunement” are other standout tracks that showcase the group’s masterful approach to sound and lyricism.

The album’s closer, “Piano Burning,” is an 18-minute field recording of a piano being burned. While this may seem like an odd choice for an outro, it fits perfectly with the album’s overall theme and creates a haunting and unsettling end to the experience. This album is not one to be taken lightly, and it demands the listener’s full attention to appreciate its depth and complexity fully.

While some may argue that this album is not for everyone, it is a shining example of how far experimentation can take Hip Hop. It is an album that truly pushes the boundaries of what is possible within the genre, and it does so with a fearlessness that is both admirable and unnerving. Unlike some other experimental releases, “There Existed an Addiction to Blood” is not trying to be edgy or innovative for the sake of it; it is a genuinely bold and uncompromising release that deserves recognition for its achievement.

Clipping’s album stands out as an example of how to execute experimentation and innovation with authenticity and integrity. The production on this album is masterful, with each track flowing seamlessly into the next, creating an immersive and cohesive experience that demands the listener’s full attention.

billy woods & Kenny Segal - Hiding Place (2019)

billy woods & Kenny Segal’s Hiding Places” is a masterful work of art that demands your attention from start to finish. With its intricate and dense lyricism, the album explores the complexities of contemporary society through the lens of personal experience, social injustice, and political strife.

Production on Hiding Places is a perfect complement to woods’ lyricism, with Segal’s haunting beats providing a soundscape that is both atmospheric and immersive. From the brooding opening track “Spongebob” to the eerie instrumental on “Red Dust” that closes out the album, every beat is carefully crafted to evoke a sense of unease and dissonance that underscores the themes explored in the lyrics.

woods’ lyricism is dense, complex, and challenging. His writing is full of literary and cultural references that require careful attention to fully appreciate. He paints vivid pictures of a world in turmoil, where social and political forces converge to create a landscape that is at once terrifying and fascinating. Tracks like “Red Dust” and “Spider Hole” showcase his lyrical prowess, as he weaves intricate wordplay and metaphors that highlight the harsh realities of life in America.

Hiding Places is an album that is not for the faint of heart. It is challenging, at times uncomfortable, and requires active engagement from the listener. But the rewards are immense. The album is a powerful exploration of contemporary society and the issues that plague it. It is a testament to the power of art to shed light on the darker aspects of human experience and to inspire reflection and action.

In a world where so much music is disposable and forgettable, Hiding Places presented a refreshing change. It is an album that demands your attention and rewards careful listening. It is an album that will stay with you long after you’ve listened to it, and that will continue to resonate with you as you navigate the complexities of contemporary society.

Yugen Blakrok - Anima Mysterium (2019)

Yugen Blakrok is a South African rapper known for her abstract lyricism, sci-fi themes, and dark, atmospheric beats. She gained international recognition with her appearance on the Black Panther soundtrack and has released two critically acclaimed albums, including the highly regarded Anima Mysterium .

Anima Mysterium is a deep and immersive journey into the mysterious depths of the universe. The album is characterized by dark, brooding, and atmospheric beats that provide a perfect backdrop for Yugen Blakrok’s abstract lyrics that touch on mysticism, mythology, and science fiction. This album is not for everyone, but it’s a must-listen for the adventurous Hip Hop enthusiast.

From the opening track “Gorgon Madonna,” Anima Mysterium sets the stage for an otherworldly experience. Yugen Blakrok’s flow is hypnotic and draws the listener into her world. The beats are intricate, with layer upon layer of sound that creates an immersive and intense experience. On “Obsidian Night,” the production is stripped down to its essentials, allowing Yugen Blakrok’s vocals to take center stage. Her lyrics are cryptic, and it’s easy to get lost in their depth and complexity.

Another standout track on the album is “Mars Attacks.” The track is a collaboration with none other than legendary rapper Kool Keith. The beat is menacing, and Yugen Blakrok and Kool Keith trade verses with ease, creating a track that’s both hard-hitting and thought-provoking. The track “Monatomic Mushroom” features an infectious beat and a catchy hook that will have listeners bobbing their heads. The lyrics explore themes of consciousness and perception and are a testament to Yugen Blakrok’s skill as a lyricist.

Each time Anima Mysterium is played, new layers of sound and meaning are revealed. The production is intricate, and the lyrics are dense and thought-provoking. The album is a testament to Yugen Blakrok’s skill as a rapper and an artist. It’s not often that an album of this depth and complexity is released, and it’s a must-listen for anyone who appreciates dark and challenging Hip Hop.

Written by HHGA Staff

20 underground hip hop albums that resonate with madvillainy fans, anatomy of a hip hop masterpiece: a track-by-track breakdown of nas' "illmatic", anatomy of a hip hop masterpiece: a track-by-track breakdown of public enemy’s "it takes a nation of millions to hold us back", 2 responses to “20 dark and challenging hip hop albums for the adventurous listener”.

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Dark Trip Hop Loops

Audio examples.

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