Instrumental hip hop treats the beat as the main event rather than a backing for an MC. Producers arrange drums, samples, bass lines and sometimes scratching into tracks meant to be heard on their own, mostly released by small independent labels. Because so much of it relies on samples, the genre has always been shaped by the cost and difficulty of clearing them.
A landmark is DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing….., released by the UK label Mo’ Wax in 1996 and assembled on an Akai MPC60 from a huge record collection; in 2013 Guinness World Records listed it as the first album made entirely from samples, a claim some writers treat with caution. J Dilla’s Donuts (2006), Madlib’s beat albums and the work of Nujabes later made the form a reference point for a new generation. Lo-fi hip hop is, in essence, instrumental hip hop slowed down, softened and arranged for long listening sessions.