Hip hop BPM

How fast, and who says so

Where the two sources overlap: 85–95 BPM. Each in its own words:

• iZotope, Using Different Tempos To Make Beats For Different Genres (2021): 85–95 BPM
• Soundtrap, How To Find BPM Of A Song (2025): 80–115 BPM

The groove on this page

Boom bap at 92: a kick on the one, a second on the last 16th of beat two, a third on the and of three, and in the second bar one more on the and of one, so the loop breathes over two bars. A hard snare on two and four, hats in 8ths. Swing at 60 % pushes every second 16th 33 ms late at this tempo, which takes the kick just before beat three off the grid, the way an MPC's swing does. iZotope gives hip hop 85 to 95; Soundtrap stretches to 115, where old school and radio rap sit.

On this page: the app's Warm kit at 92 BPM, swing 60 %.

Delay and LFO values

A delay in time with the track repeats once per note value: a quarter note lasts 60,000 divided by the BPM, in milliseconds. Dotted is one and a half times that, triplet two thirds. An LFO synced to a note value cycles at 1,000 divided by those milliseconds, in Hz. The table follows the tempo above: − and + move it, and so does a tempo you tap.

Genres near this tempo

• R&B: 80–90 BPM
• Reggaeton: about 90 BPM
• Pop: 80–104 BPM
• Afrobeats: 100–115 BPM

All twenty genres on one axis, with 92 BPM marked: the BPM chart.

Hip hop BPM by style

Hip hop has two home tempos: about 90 for the head-nod styles, and 140 written for trap and drill, which you nod to at 70. The number producers quote most for boom bap is 87 (Just Producer, Meshplugins). The rest sits around those two. Ranges as producers set them in the DAW (iZotope 2021, Sample Focus 2025, Meshplugins 2026):

Half-time and double-time: 70 and 140 are the same beat

BPM counts quarter notes; the feel comes from where the snare lands. Snare on two and four, and you nod at the written tempo. One snare a bar, on beat three, and the same 140 BPM session nods at 70. That is half-time, the default in trap and drill. Producers write the fast number so the hat rolls fit the grid: 16ths at 140 are 32nds at 70.

So a hip hop tempo has two honest readings. Tap the pad above on the head nod of a trap record (the kick, then the snare, one tap each) and it reads about 70, below this page's 85 to 95. Tap twice per nod, on every second hat, and it reads 140. BPM databases print either one: SongBPM lists "Lose Yourself" at 171 and "C.R.E.A.M." at 181, which you hear at 86 and 91. Halve or double until the number fits the style.

Everything timed to the beat follows the written tempo. A 16-bar verse lasts 3,840 divided by the BPM, in seconds: 42.7 s at 90, 27.4 s at 140, the same as 8 bars at 70. A 1/8 delay is 333 ms at 90 and 214 ms at 140; the table above has the rest.

Hip hop songs by BPM

Tempos as SongBPM and Musiciwant list them in 2026 (Mos Def's from Tunebat); where a record is nodded to at half, both numbers. The databases differ by a BPM now and then, so tap along on the pad to check one.

Hip hop songs at 120 BPM come from two places: old-school and party rap played straight ("Bust a Move" 117, "Planet Rock" and "Push It" 127, "Low" 128) and trap written high and nodded to at half ("Gucci Gang" 120, "Bodak Yellow" 125). At 100 sit the club records of the 1990s and 2000s: "Hip Hop Hooray" 99, "Get Low" 101, "Insane in the Brain" and "Work It" 102. At 80 to 86: "Gangsta's Paradise" 80, "Black and Yellow" nodded to at 82, "N.Y. State of Mind" and "Lucid Dreams" 84, "Started From the Bottom" 86. Songs at 150 are nearly all trap, nodded to at 75; 84 to 95 holds most of the 1990s classics.

Drake has no one tempo: "God's Plan" 77, "Started From the Bottom" 86, "Hotline Bling" 135, nodded to at 68 (SongBPM). Is 120 BPM fast? For rap, yes: it is the top of old-school party rap, and trap gets past it only by being written at double. For dance music it is slow: house mostly runs 120 to 128, techno 125 to 135.

How fast does Eminem rap?

Faster than the beat. "Rap God" runs at 148 BPM by SongBPM; its record is the words: 1,560 of them in 6 minutes 4 seconds, 4.28 a second on average, Guinness World Records' most words in a hit single (2013). At 148 BPM that is about 1.7 words a beat. His fastest verse is the end of "Godzilla" (2020): 224 words in 31 seconds, 10.65 syllables a second, against 9.6 on "Rap God" (Wikipedia, "Godzilla (Eminem song)"). "Lose Yourself" is written at 171 and nodded to at 86. A rapper's speed and the beat's tempo are two numbers: double-time rapping puts 16th-note syllables over a slow beat.

Where hip hop's tempos come from

Hip hop started on two turntables. On 11 August 1973, at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx, DJ Kool Herc played the drum breaks of funk records back to back from two copies, with Coke La Rock on the mic. No rapper started it, a DJ did; Coke La Rock, on Herc's mic, is often called the first MC. The breaks ran at the speed the funk bands played, so old-school rap ran at 100 to 120. The samplers of the late 1980s, E-mu's SP-1200 (1987) and Akai's MPC60 (1988), let producers chop a break and set any tempo, and the New York sound of the 1990s settled at 85 to 95: boom bap, named for the kick and the snare. In Houston, DJ Screw slowed whole tapes to 60 to 70. Atlanta's trap (the word is slang for a drug house; T.I.'s 2003 album "Trap Muzik" put it on a record) kept the slow nod but wrote it at double, with 808s and hat rolls. Chicago drill (Chief Keef's "I Don't Like", 2012), then UK and Brooklyn drill, kept it at 140 to 145.

Rap is the voice; hip hop is the culture and the music under it, so Eminem is both. What makes a beat hip hop is the drums more than the number: a backbeat on two and four (or on three, at half-time), swing or rolling hats, and a sample or a bass loop that leaves room for a voice.

Setting the tempo for your own beat

• Boom bap: 88 to 92, swing on the 16ths (the groove above plays 92 at 60 %).
• West Coast: 92 to 96, a synth bass with room for the bounce.
• Trap: write at 140 unless the reference is clearly faster, the snare on three, hats in 16ths with 32nd rolls.
• Drill: 140 to 145, sliding 808s, the snares late.
• No reference at all: start at 90 or at 140, and tap the record you hear in your head on the pad to find its number.

Then make something of it

The door opens Brumm, a club track with a beat and a bass, with this groove's low end in it. The app runs between 90 and 150 BPM, so a tempo outside goes in at half or double, or at the nearest end when neither fits. No account, no upload: it travels inside the link. Hum a line over it, and it becomes an instrument.

Nothing is recorded: no microphone, only your taps, counted in the browser. The groove's sounds are the app's own samples, fetched when you tap Play. How the site counts visits.