The Birth of Trap Music

Naming a sound

Trap started as Atlanta slang long before it was a genre, and rappers in the city spent the late 1990s and early 2000s shaping a harder, darker sound to match it. The moment it got a name on a record shelf was August 19, 2003, when T.I. released Trap Muzik on Grand Hustle and Atlantic. With DJ Toomp as executive producer, the album debuted at number four on the Billboard 200, and the single "Rubber Band Man" rode a bright, climbing organ riff into the Hot 100.

Toomp was the bridge between eras. Born in Atlanta in 1969, he had cut his teeth on Miami bass in the 1980s before producing T.I.'s first four albums. Their collaboration "What You Know" reached number three on the Hot 100 and won both men their first Grammy, and Toomp later co-produced "Good Life" and "Can't Tell Me Nothing" for Kanye West.

The architects

In 2005 the blueprint came into focus. Jeezy's Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101 debuted at number two with 172,000 copies in its first week, and much of its mood came from Shawty Redd, whose ominous, horror-movie keyboards and booming drums made every verse feel like a film score. That same year Gucci Mane released Trap House, and his single "Icy" put a young producer named Zaytoven on the map.

Zaytoven, born Xavier Dotson, brought something unexpected to the style: real keyboard chops. His bouncing piano and organ lines gave Gucci Mane's long run of mixtapes a playful, melodic shine, and he later produced Migos' breakout "Versace" and a long list of Future records. Gucci's 1017 label went on to introduce Young Thug and Waka Flocka Flame, keeping the pipeline of new voices flowing.

How a trap beat works

The core ingredient is the Roland TR-808, a drum machine Roland introduced in 1980 and stopped making by 1983. Trap producers tune its kick drum to musical notes and stretch its decay until it becomes a rumbling sub-bass line. On top sit hi-hats programmed in rapid double and triple time, often rolling into stuttering bursts, plus sharp snares or claps on the half-time backbeat. Most trap sits around 70 beats per minute, which the hi-hats make feel like 140.

The melodies matter just as much: layered synthesizers, cinematic strings, choirs and brass stabs that sound grand and slightly spooky at once. Virginia-born, Atlanta-based Lex Luger pushed that orchestral approach to the extreme in 2010 on Waka Flocka Flame's "Hard in the Paint," built in FL Studio. That year Luger, Southside and TM88 helped form 808 Mafia in Atlanta, a production crew named after the machine at the heart of the sound.

From Atlanta to the world

The next generation took trap from mixtapes to the top of the charts. St. Louis native Metro Boomin moved to Atlanta for college in 2012, co-produced Migos' "Bad and Boujee," a Hot 100 number one, and later topped the Billboard 200 with Not All Heroes Wear Capes, Heroes and Villains, and We Don't Trust You with Future. Marietta's Mike WiLL Made-It carried the drums into pop, executive producing Miley Cyrus's Bangerz and producing Rae Sremmurd's chart-topping "Black Beatles" and Kendrick Lamar's Grammy-winning "HUMBLE."

By January 2014, Katy Perry's trap-flavored "Dark Horse" was sitting at number one, and the rolling hi-hat soon became a default rhythm across pop, R&B and dance music worldwide. Turn on almost any chart playlist today and you can hear the fingerprints of a handful of Atlanta studios.

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