Lo-fi Hip Hop Samples

Warm and nostalgic, Lo-fi hip hop samples feature relaxed beats, soft bass lines, muffled piano chords, jazzy guitar licks, and intentional imperfections like vinyl crackle. Some view the genre as a natural evolution from the boom bap experimentations of legendary producers like J Dilla, Nujabes, and Madlib in the early 2000s. Drawing from the sampling traditions of hip hop and the hazy aesthetic of jazz and soul, its signature sound is deliberately degraded through heavy use of tape saturation, filtering, and pitch shifting. Lo-fi hop hop gained massive popularity in the 2010s as the "beats to relax/study to" movement exploded through Soundcloud and YouTube playlists.