ROYALTY FREE HIP-HOP BEATS

Are you a hip hop artist looking for free beats? Or maybe you make videos on YouTube and you need a cool hip hop instrumental to use as background music? Whatever your need is, our hip hop beats are free for you to use! Any creative purpose is allowed, just make sure you adhere to our terms of use.

INFORMATION ABOUT HIP HOP INSTRUMENTALS

Hip hop beats generally have a tempo of 80-100 beats-per-minute. Rather than using electronic drums and sounds, most hip hop instrumentals use drums, melodies and basslines sampled from vinyl. These samples will usually originate from R&B / Soul records from the 60s and 70s. However, this is not always the case -- many modern producers have started composing their own melodies / basslines with virtual instruments and adding production effects to them instead of sampling vinyl records. This is done to avoid infringing on copyrights, clearing samples and paying royalties. Drums on a hip hop beat are often played in a swing/shuffle pattern, as opposed to straight-time -- this is what gives many hip hop songs their "head nodding" appeal. Many attribute this to the Akai MPC, which was a very popular sampler used by hip hop producers in the 1990s and had very pronounced swing settings by default.

There are a variety of subgenres in hip hop and the beats that correspond with these different subgenres are stylistically distinct. Boom bap beats are usually sparse melodically, instead focusing on loud, in-your-face kick & snare drum loops. West coast beats (a style popularized by Dr. Dre in the 90s) are usually funk-inspired with simplified drum patterns. Other elements found in west coast hip hop instrumentals include piano chords, string stabs, synthesized 'moog' bass and high-pitched 'worm' synth lead melodies. East coast hip hop beats rely heavily on samples and are often described as "raw" sounding. These types of beats can be very diverse, ranging from soulful (eg. J Dilla, Pete Rock) to dark and grimy (eg. RZA, Havoc).

Most hip hop fans consider the 1990's as the "golden era of hip hop". The sound and vibe of music produced during this time is what many modern music producers are trying to recapture when making hip hop instrumentals. Other noteworthy producers that both pioneered and defined the sound of modern hip hop beats include DJ Premier, Just Blaze, Swizz Beatz & Large Professor.