Trip Hop
Trip hop is a slow, moody style that mixes hip hop breakbeats and sampling with elements of soul, dub, jazz and electronic music.
It came out of Bristol, England, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Tracks move at a slow pace over heavy bass and slowed-down sampled breakbeats, with samples from film soundtracks and often a female singer. The mood is melancholic and atmospheric. The name came from a 1994 article in the British magazine Mixmag, and Portishead later distanced themselves from the label.
Artists it is known for: Massive Attack, Portishead, Tricky.
- Family
- Electronic & Dance
- On Spotify
- A current genre
- What it is
- A genre
- From
- Bristol, around 1990
- Also called
- Bristol sound
- Trackify listeners who play it
- 4%
About 3,500 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have trip hop among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.
Trip Hop artists
Portishead
Björk
Massive Attack
FKA twigs
Air
Boards of Canada
After
Moby
Sneaker Pimps
Saint EtienneThe trip 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.