Phonk is a sub-genre of rap/hip-hop, not house or any other electronic genre, though it has been gentrified by European electronic/house producers. Phonk is a late 2000s - early 2010s dirty south revival movement with influences from memphis rap, jazz, g-funk, miami bass and chopped and screwed remixing technique. Notable artists that shaped the original phonk sound are DJ Smokey, JGRXXN, Mr. Sisco, SpaceGhostPurrp (as well as the rest of Raider Klan and associates), DJ Screw and many Memphis artists such as Tommy Wright lll and Three 6 Mafia. Subgenres of phonk have evolved and the more popular sounds continue to be memphis rap and drift phonk, but with pioneers like ErickD, SwuM, and Varo, phonk is moving back to more of it's melodic "funk" based roots, often referred to as " rare phonk" or " melodic phonk" by names like RyanCelsius and TrillPhonk on YouTube. The most accessible version, as well as the most popular, of true phonk would be $uicideboy$. (though not all of their work is phonk) The rise in popularity in drift phonk has increased drastically recently through TikTok and the car community mainly in 2020, and more recently through Russian users and artists gaining access to Spotify, allowing a large amount of users to leave SoundCloud and enter the Spotify ecosystem. This has lead to the popularization of house music labeled as phonk, which has completely ruined the mainstream audience perception of phonk. The current electronic music being labeled as phonk, made by artists such as Kordhell and MUPP, have nothing to do sonically or culturally with phonk and really shouldn't be called phonk at all. For a better understanding on how this genre went from jazz influenzed trap beats and southern rap samples, to house music and tiktok edits watch Yokai's video "How Spotify is Killing Phonk" for a basic run-down.
Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.
