Boom Bap
Boom bap is a style of hip hop production built on hard, sampled kick and snare drums, typical of East Coast rap from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s.
The name imitates the drums: boom for the kick, bap for the snare. Producers such as DJ Premier and Pete Rock chopped drum breaks and jazz or soul samples on machines like the SP-1200 and MPC, leaving a dusty, head-nodding loop for lyric-focused rappers. KRS-One's 1993 album Return of the Boom Bap popularized the term. It is rawer and less polished than trap.
Artists it is known for: Gang Starr, KRS-One, Pete Rock & CL Smooth, Nas.
- Family
- Hip-Hop & Rap
- On Spotify
- A current genre
- What it is
- A genre
- From
- New York City, late 1980s
- Also called
- boom-bap
- Trackify listeners who play it
- 4%
About 3,200 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have boom bap among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.
Boom Bap artists
Westside Gunn
Joey Valence & Brae
Benny The Butcher
The Alchemist
Boldy James
BK
Gang Starr
MIKE
Big L
Racionais MC's
The boom bap 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.