Alternative Hip Hop
Alternative hip hop is rap that steps outside the genre's commercial conventions, drawing freely on jazz, funk, rock, soul and electronic music.
It took shape in the late 1980s with De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest and the rest of the Native Tongues collective, who favored playful samples and thoughtful or humorous lyrics over tough-guy themes. Later artists such as OutKast and The Roots brought it larger audiences. It is a broad label, defined more by attitude than by one sound.
Artists it is known for: De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, OutKast, The Roots.
- Family
- Hip-Hop & Rap
- On Spotify
- A current genre
- What it is
- A genre
- From
- United States, late 1980s
- Also called
- alternative rap, backpack rap
- Trackify listeners who play it
- 12%
About 10,000 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have alternative hip hop among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.
Alternative Hip Hop artists
Gorillaz
MF DOOM
Freddie Gibbs
Westside Gunn
Madvillain
JPEGMAFIA
A Tribe Called Quest
Lupe Fiasco
Earl Sweatshirt
Clipse
The alternative hip hop artists most Trackify listeners have in their top fifty. Each opens on Spotify.
Sources
The definition is written for this site from open sources, and was checked against them on 13 November 2026.