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What is lo-fi hip hop?
A type of chill music genre that is, by and large, copyright-free. It is widely encountered as the background music of almost every YouTube video or Twitch stream. Lo-fi hip hop started off as a unique genre which grew popular in 2016, but has now become rather mainstream, with more and more amateur producers trying to replicate that quintessential mellow lo-fi vibe, and more and more content creators depending on this music.
To achieve the lo-fi hip hop vibe, you will need all of the following:
1) Vinyl and/or ambiance background loops
2) Lo-fi drum samples (primarily found on splice.com)
3) Continuing, a hip hop beat with a large amount of swing applied
4) Mellow sounding instruments like a Rhodes piano, Kalimba or acoustic guitar
5) Amping and distortion for that fuzzy effect
6) Various mellow-sounding foley sounds (e.g. leaves crunching, gentle footsteps)
7) Some musical creativity (this is all dependent on your knowledge on music theory and your familiarity with good-tasting music in general)
Unlike most producers, lo-fi hip hop producers tend to stay behind the scenes, wanting to draw little attention to themselves. These producers mainly produce music not for money, not for popularity, but simply for curiosity and general fondness with the genre. They need not be experienced with music theory to make lo-fi hip hop, but rather a passion and keen sense for music is sufficient enough.
Thus, lo-fi hip hop, to a degree, sort of presents itself as a grassroots movement made up of various amateur producers that want to experiment with this genre. Nobody really knows who these producers are, all we know is that they make some great-sounding music that turns out to be 100x better than what any high-profile pop producer could make.
(This definition was written by a long-time EDM producer.)
lo-fi hip hop - video
