The name comes from the boxes, or crates, of second-hand vinyl that producers and DJs search one record at a time. The goal is a usable moment: a drum break, a horn stab, a bassline or a few bars of piano that nobody else has used. For hip hop beatmakers of the 1990s the search was part of the craft, often done together at record shops, garage sales and record fairs.
After YouTube launched in 2005 and many record shops closed in the following years, much digging moved online, to video platforms, blogs and digital archives. Jazz lo-fi inherits the habit: many producers learned the genre’s palette by searching through old jazz, soul and bossa nova records, and the phrase is now used loosely for any patient search for overlooked music.