Drumless is a style of Hip Hop production pioneered in the early 2010s characterized by a lack of drums or minimal, subtle percussion typically built around a single, looped sample. Unlike most hip hop music defined by its strong percussive and rhythmic elements, the instrumentals of drumless are stripped down to the bare sample without many additional components. While other sample-based hip hop is traditionally produced by sampling and looping the strong percussion break section of a song
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Drumless is a style of Hip Hop production pioneered in the early 2010s characterized by a lack of drums or minimal, subtle percussion typically built around a single, looped sample. Unlike most hip hop music defined by its strong percussive and rhythmic elements, the instrumentals of drumless are stripped down to the bare sample without many additional components. While other sample-based hip hop is traditionally produced by sampling and looping the strong percussion break section of a song, producers of the drumless style tend to rely more on samples that lack heavy percussion or with completely absent drums. The production also lacks the typical use of a drum machine or the addition of heavier kicks, hi-hats, snares, or basslines to reinforce the beat of the original sample. The percussion, if present, is usually left untouched from the original sample and occasionally filtered out from the audio mix.
The style has its early roots in the 1990s and 2000s with the production of the RZA, whose beats would occasionally consist of a single, looped Soul sample with minimal percussion or no additional musical components. The stripped-down post-Boom Bap soulful production and soft percussion of Madlib and The Alchemist's beats, in particular, were also significant influences on the style. The Alchemist became a prominent figure within the genre and had his hand in producing a number of notable songs and albums in the drumless style. Another notable early example is Jay Electronica's Act 1: Eternal Sunshine (The Pledge) which consisted entirely of drumless, looped film score samples.
The genre came to form in the early 2010s with the music of rapper-producers Ka and Roc Marciano, whose albums Grief Pedigree and Reloaded consisted mostly of unaltered loops of 1970s soul and Rock music with soft or minimal percussion and Gangsta Rap lyrics revolving around street tales of urban crime, drugs, and violence. The style became a popular sound in the second half of the decade among a number of other gangsta rappers, particularly 'coke-rap' artists whose lyrics revolved around cocaine manufacture and trade, as exemplified by the works of artists associated with the Griselda Records label, most notably Westside Gunn and Boldy James. Producers such as The Alchemist, Preservation, and V Don developed the sound further by relying on samples with near-absent percussive elements. Veteran west coast producer DJ Muggs became a prominent figure in the genre, having prolifically produced numerous collaborative projects with a number of different rappers within the style during the late 2010s and early 2020s. The drumless sound also became popular among some Abstract Hip Hop and Experimental Hip Hop artists, including Killah Priest, Earl Sweatshirt, and Navy Blue, who drew samples from a wider, more eclectic variety of sources.
