Trip hop is a genre of electronic music that originated in the early 1990s in the United
Kingdom, especially Bristol.
Deriving from "post"-acid house, the term was first used by the British music media
and press as a way to describe the more experimental variant of breakbeat which contained influences
of soul, funk and jazz.
It has been described as "Europe's alternative choice in the second half of the '90s", and
"a fusion of hip hop and electronica until neither genre is recognisable."
Trip hop music fuses several styles and has much in common with other genres; it has several
qualities similar to ambient music and its drum-based breakdowns share characteristics
with hip hop.
It also contains elements of R&B, dub and house, as well as other electronic music.
Trip hop can be highly experimental in nature.
History 1990s
Trip hop originated in and around the city of Bristol during a time when American hip
hop, dance and house music had begun to increase in popularity.
According to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, the term "trip-hop" was coined in 1989, though
its earliest use in print was in June 1994; Andy Pemberton, a music journalist writing
for Mixmag, used it to describe Mo Wax Records Artist R.P.M and DJ Shadow's "In/Flux" single.
In Bristol, once one of the most important ports in the Atlantic slave-trade and as of
2012 among Britain's most racially diverse cities, hip hop began to seep into the consciousness
of a subculture already well-schooled in Jamaican forms of music.
DJs, MCs, b-boys and graffiti artists grouped together into informal soundsystems.
Like the pioneering Bronx crews of DJs Kool Herc, Afrika Bambataa and Grandmaster Flash,
the soundsystems provided party music for public spaces, often in the economically deprived
council estates from which some of their members originated.
Bristol's soundsystem DJs, drawing heavily on Jamaican dub music, typically used a laid-back,
slow and heavy drum beat.
Bristol's Wild Bunch crew was one of the soundsystems to put a local spin on the international phenomenon,
helping to birth Bristol's signature sound of trip hop.
The Wild Bunch and its associates included at various times in its existence the MC Adrian
"Tricky Kid" Thaws, the graffiti artist and lyricist Robert "3D" Del Naja, producer Jonny
Dollar and the DJs Nellee Hooper, Andrew "Mushroom" Vowles and Grant "Daddy G" Marshall.
As the hip hop scene matured in Bristol and musical trends evolved further toward acid
jazz and house in the late '80s, the golden era of the soundsystem was ending.
The Wild Bunch signed a record deal and evolved into Massive Attack, a core collective of
3D, Mushroom and Daddy G, with significant contributions from Tricky Kid Dollar and Hooper
on production duties, along with a rotating cast of other vocalists.
Another influence was Gary Clail's Tackhead soundsystem.
Clail often worked with former The Pop Group singer Mark Stewart.
The latter experimented with his band Mark Stewart & The Maffia which consisted of New
York session musicians Skip McDonald, Doug Wimbish, and Keith LeBlanc, who had been a
part of the house band for the Sugarhill Records record label.
Produced by Adrian Sherwood, the music combined hiphop with experimental rock and dub and
sounded like a premature version of what later became trip hop.
In 1993, Kirsty MacColl released 'Angel', one of the first examples of the genre being
crossed over to pop, a hybrid which dominated the charts toward the end of the decade.
Early to mid-1990s: Trip-hop's mainstream breakthrough
Massive Attack's first album Blue Lines was released in 1991 to huge success in the UK.
Blue Lines was seen widely as the first major manifestation of a uniquely British hip hop
movement, but the album's hit single "Unfinished Sympathy" and several other tracks, while
their rhythms were largely sample-based, were not seen as hip hop songs in any conventional
sense.
Produced by Dollar, Shara Nelson featured on the orchestral "Unfinished," and Jamaican
dance hall star Horace Andy provided vocals on several other tracks, as he would throughout
Massive Attack's career.
Massive Attack released their second album entitled Protection in 1994.
Although Tricky stayed on in a lesser role, and Hooper again produced, the fertile dance
music scene of the early '90s had informed the record, and it was seen as an even more
significant shift away from the Wild Bunch era.
The term trip hop was coined that year, but not in reference to anything on the Massive
Attack albums.
In the June 1994 issue of UK magazine Mixmag, music journalist Andy Pemberton used it to
describe the hip hop instrumental "In/Flux", a 1993 single by San Francisco's DJ Shadow,
and other similar tracks released on the Mo' Wax label and being played in London clubs
at the time.
"In/Flux", with its mixed up bpms, spoken word samples, strings, melodies, bizarre noises,
prominent bass, and slow beats, gave the listener the impression they were on a musical trip,
according to Pemberton.
Soon, however, Massive Attack's dubby, jazzy, psychedelic, electronic textures, rooted in
hip hop sampling technique but taking flight into many styles, were described by journalists
as the template of the eponymous genre.
1994 and 1995 saw trip hop near the peak of its popularity, with artists such as Howie
B, Naked Funk and Earthling making significant contributions.
Those years also marked the rise of London band Red Snapper.
Ninja Tune, the independent record label founded by the Coldcut duo, would significantly influence
the trip-hop sound in London and beyond with breakthrough artists DJ Food, 9 Lazy 9, Up,
Bustle & Out, Funki Porcini and The Herbaliser, among others.
The period also marked the debut of two acts who, along with Massive Attack, would define
the Bristol scene for years to come.
In 1994 Portishead released their debut album, Dummy.
A trio fronted by singer Beth Gibbons, Portishead also included sonic manipulators Geoff Barrow
and Adrian Utley.
Their background differed from Massive Attack in many ways: one of Portishead's primary
influences was 1960s and '70s film soundtrack LPs.
Nevertheless, Portishead shared the scratchy, jazz-sample-based aesthetic of early Massive
Attack, and the sullen, fragile vocals of Gibbons also brought them wide acclaim.
In 1995, Dummy was awarded the Mercury Music Prize as the best British album of the year,
giving trip-hop as a genre its greatest exposure yet.
Portishead's music, seen as cutting edge in its film noir feel and stylish, yet emotional
appropriations of past sounds, was also widely imitated, causing the band to recoil from
the trip-hop label they had inadvertently helped popularize.
Tricky also released his debut solo album, Maxinquaye, in 1995 - to great critical acclaim.
Tricky employed whispered, often abstract stream-of-consciousness murmuring, remote
from the gangsta-rap braggadocio of the mid '90s US hip hop scene.
Even more unusually, however, many of the solo songs on Maxinquaye featured little of
Tricky's own voice: his then-lover, Martina Topley-Bird, sang them, including her reimagining
of Public Enemy's militant 1988 rap "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos", while other songs
were male-female duets dealing with sex and love in oblique ways, over beds of sometimes
dissonant samples.
Within a year Tricky had released two more full-length albums which were considered even
more challenging, without finding the same popularity as his Bristol contemporaries Massive
Attack and Portishead.
Through his brief collaborations with Björk, however, he also exerted influence closer
to the pop and alternative rock mainstream, and he developed a large cult fan-base.
Musician Poe released her 1995 debut Hello, an album that featured Trip-Hop elements,
to critical praise.
The London-based band Archive began as trip hop, before developing into progressive rock,
employing elements of both hip hop and orchestral music with the album Controlling Crowds.
Although not as popular in the United States bands like Portishead and Sneaker Pimps saw
moderate air play on Alternative Rock stations across the country.
Post-trip hop
After the initial success of trip hop in the mid-1990s, a new generation of trip hop artists
emerged with a more standardized sound.
Notable "post-trip-hop" artists include Esthero, Morcheeba, Sneaker Pimps, Anomie Belle, Alpha,
Jaianto, Mudville and Cibo Matto and Lamb.
These artists incorporated trip hop into other genres, including ambient, soul, IDM, industrial,
dubstep, breakbeat, drum and bass, acid jazz, and new-age.
The first printed use of the term "post-trip hop" was in an October 2002 article of The
Independent, and was used to describe the band Second Person.
Trip hop has also influenced artists in other genres, including Gorillaz, Emancipator, Nine
Inch Nails, Travis, Allflaws, How to Destroy Angels, Beth Orton, The Flaming Lips, Bitter:Sweet,
Beck, Deftones, Björk.
Several tracks on Australian pop singer Kylie Minogue's 1997 album Impossible Princess also
suggested a trip hop influence.
Various prominent artists and groups, such as Janet Jackson, Kylie Minogue, Madonna,
Björk, and Radiohead, have also been influenced by the genre.
Trip hop has spawned several subgenres, including Illbient,.
Trip hop in the 2000s
Trip hop continued to influence notable artists in the 2000s.
Atmospheric rock band Antimatter included some trip hop elements in their first two
albums.
RJD2 began his career as a DJ, but in 2001, began releasing albums under El-P's Def Jux
Label.
Zero 7's album Simple Things, and in particular, its lead single "Destiny", was regarded highly
by underground listeners and achieved significant popularity.
In 2006, Gotye debuted his first album Like Drawing Blood.
The songs on the album featured down-tempo hip-hop beats and dub style bass reminiscent
of trip hop.
Hip hop groups Zion I and the Dub Pistols also displayed heavy trip hop influence.
Norwegian singer and songwriter, Kate Havnevik, is a classically trained musician, but also
incorporates trip hop into her work.
Producers Many producers who were not explicitly trip-hop
artists also displayed its influence during the early 2000s.
Daniel Nakamura, aka Dan The Automator, released two albums that were heavily inspired by trip
hop. 2000 album Deltron 3030, was a concept album about a rapper, portrayed by Del Tha
Funkee Homosapien, from the future.
2001 saw the release of his side project, Lovage.
Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By, with special guests Mike Patton, Prince Paul, Maseo,
Damon Albarn, and Afrika Bambaataa.
British producer Fatboy Slim's break through album, Halfway Between the Gutter and The
Stars, was his most commercially successful release.
Trip hop in the 2010s Major notable releases include Massive Attack's
Heligoland and Dutch's A Bright Cold Day in 2010.
How To Destroy Angels released a self-titled EP in 2010, and a full album Welcome Oblivion
in 2013.
DJ Shadow's The Less You Know, The Better was released in 2011.
Geoff Barrow's >> was released in 2012 Lana Del Rey released her second album, Born
to Die in 2012, which contained a string of trip hop ballads, topped the charts in eleven
countries, including Australia, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom; and has sold 3.4 million
copies worldwide as of 2013 according to International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.
Tricky released his tenth studio album 'False Idols' on 23 May 2013.
British trip hop trio London Grammar released their debut album If You Wait on 9 September
2013 and set platinum certification by BPI.
Singer FKA twigs, often cited as a trip hop musician, was nominated for BBC's Sound of
2014 prize and chosen by Spotify for their Spotlight on 2014 list.
Musical elements Common musical aesthetics include a bass-heavy
drumbeat, often emulating the slowed breakbeat samples typical of hip hop in the 1990s.
Vocals in trip hop are often female and feature characteristics of various singing styles
including R&B, jazz and rock.
The female-dominant vocals of trip hop may be partially attributable to the influence
of genres such as jazz and early R&B in which female vocalists were more common.
However, there are notable exceptions; Massive Attack has collaborated with male and female
singers.
Tricky often features vocally in his own productions and Chris Corner provided vocals for late
albums with his group Sneaker Pimps.
Trip hop is also known for its melancholy.
This may be partly due to the fact that several acts were inspired by post punk bands; Tricky
and Massive Attack both covered and sampled songs of Siouxsie and the Banshees and The
Cure.
Tricky opened his second album Nearly God by a version of "Tattoo", a pre-trip-hop song
of Siouxsie and the Banshees.
Trip hop tracks often sample Rhodes pianos, saxophones, trumpets, and flutes.
Trip hop differs from hip hop in theme and overall tone.
Instead of gangsta rap with its hard-hitting lyrics, trip hop offers a more aural atmospherics
with instrumental hip hop, turntable scratching, and breakbeat rhythms.
Regarded in some ways as a 90s update of fusion, trip hop may be said to 'transcend' the hardcore
rap styles and lyrics with atmospheric overtones to create a more mellow tempo.
See also Chill-out music
List of electronic music genres References
External links "Trip Hop Radio" Internet radio
"Trip-Hop" Allmusic guide essay by Sean Cooper "World of Trip Hop" Webpage
Triptica - An internet Radio dedicated to Trip Hop
NPR's history of trip hop