Rap
Rap is music built on rhythmic, rhyming speech delivered over a beat, and the word is used almost interchangeably with hip hop.
A rapper speaks or chants verses in time with drums, bass and samples or synthesizers instead of singing a tune, although many rappers now mix the two. Rapping grew up at Bronx block parties in the 1970s, where MCs talked over DJs' drum breaks. Strictly, rap is the vocal part and hip hop is the wider culture and music around it.
Artists it is known for: Run-DMC, Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar.
- Family
- Hip-Hop & Rap
- On Spotify
- A current genre
- What it is
- A broad heading
- From
- The Bronx, New York, 1970s
- Also called
- hip hop, rap music
- Trackify listeners who play it
- 56%
About 47,000 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have rap among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.
Rap artists
Drake
Kanye West
Kendrick Lamar
Travis Scott
Don Toliver
Tyler, The Creator
Future
A$AP Rocky
Playboi Carti
Lil Uzi Vert
The rap 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.