Lo-fi hip hop is a relaxed, mostly instrumental offshoot of hip hop. A typical track loops a few jazz or soul chords, taken from a sample or played on a Rhodes-style keyboard, over slow and loosely played drums, then dulls the sound with filtering, tape saturation and vinyl crackle. Tracks are short, rarely build to a climax and are designed to sit comfortably in the background.
Its roots lie in the sample-based beatmaking of the 2000s, and in particular in the loose drum feel of J Dilla and the jazz-soaked productions of Nujabes, both often called godfathers of the style. Small samplers such as Roland’s SP-303 and SP-404, with built-in lo-fi effects, helped shape the sound. In the 2010s the music found a mass audience through YouTube live streams that never stop, above all the ChilledCow channel, later renamed Lofi Girl, which began streaming in February 2017. Researchers at Goldsmiths, University of London, published one of the first academic studies of the genre in 2019.