East Coast Hip Hop
East Coast hip hop is rap from the northeastern United States, centered on New York City, where hip hop began in the 1970s.
Its classic sound is boom bap: hard sampled drums, chopped jazz and soul loops and dense, multi-syllable rhymes that put lyrical skill first. New York led rap through the 1980s, and in the 1990s artists such as Nas, Wu-Tang Clan and The Notorious B.I.G. set its gritty street style against the smoother funk of the West Coast.
Artists it is known for: Wu-Tang Clan, Nas, The Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z.
- Family
- Hip-Hop & Rap
- On Spotify
- A current genre
- What it is
- A scene
- From
- New York City, 1970s
- Also called
- east coast rap
- Trackify listeners who play it
- 19%
About 16,000 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have east coast hip hop among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.
East Coast Hip Hop artists
A$AP Rocky
JAŸ-Z
50 Cent
MF DOOM
The Notorious B.I.G.
Nas
A Tribe Called Quest
Wu-Tang Clan
Benny The Butcher
Beastie Boys
The east coast 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.