R&B BPM

How fast, and who says so

Where the two sources overlap: 80–90 BPM. Each in its own words:

• Whipped Cream Sounds, What Tempo is RnB Music Made At? We Analysed 50 Songs (2022): 80–120 BPM
• Orphiq, BPM Chart by Genre (2026): 60–90 BPM

The groove on this page

This groove is the 90s R&B pocket at 86: a kick that answers itself late in the bar, a snare on two and four with a soft clap behind it, hats with gaps in them, all swung at 58 %. Press − to 70 for a slow jam, or + to 100 for new jack swing and the club R&B of the early 2000s. A producer making modern R&B often sets the project to double, 130 to 150, and writes the same feel in half-time.

On this page: the app's Warm kit at 86 BPM, swing 58 %.

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

• Lo-fi hip hop: 60–80 BPM
• Hip hop: 85–95 BPM
• Reggaeton: about 90 BPM
• Pop: 80–104 BPM

All twenty genres on one axis, with 86 BPM marked: the BPM chart.

What BPM is R&B?

Mostly 60 to 100, and the era decides more than any rule. The two sources above agree on 80 to 90, the slow-to-mid pocket most R&B is felt in, and disagree around it for a reason: Orphiq gives 60 to 90, while Whipped Cream Sounds counted fifty songs and got an average of 109, most between 80 and 120. A slow jam at 65 whose hats run in 16ths is easily typed in as 130, and the average climbs. Tap the snare on two and four, not the hats: the number you get is the tempo people feel.

R&B tempo by era

Song tempos from jog.fm and BPMcalc, Kill Bill and the disco-era songs from SongBPM, Yeah! and No Scrubs from Whipped Cream Sounds' count (2022); the quiet storm, new jack swing, neo-soul and alternative ranges from BPMcalc's subgenre table, the funk range from its related genres, the disco-era range from a DJ's set of 110-to-120 BPM classics on SoundCloud, the 85 from an r/DnB thread on mid-90s R&B; read October 2026.

R&B songs at 100, 110, 120 and 130 BPM

At 100 sits a crowd that blends without touching the pitch: Too Close, Every Little Step, Me & U (Cassie), Put Your Records On (Corinne Bailey Rae), all 100 on jog.fm, with Superstition at 99, Karma (Alicia Keys) at 102, Crazy in Love at 99 to 100 and Fantasy (Mariah Carey) at 102. Around 110 sit Upside Down (Diana Ross) at 108 and Ladies' Night (Kool & the Gang) at 112; at 120, How Will I Know (Whitney Houston), with Le Freak a beat under at 119 (SongBPM, October 2026). An R&B song listed at 130 or 150 is nearly always a slow groove counted in 16ths, or trap-R&B written at double with its snare on beat three: tap it on the pad and it reads 65 to 75 when you follow the snare. Leave the Door Open (Silk Sonic) shows up at 148 on some sites; Whipped Cream Sounds counts it at 74, the tempo you feel.

Played straight, 130 is UK garage and trance, 150 hardstyle, and 160 to 180 drum and bass and footwork; 200 is fast for anything but speedcore, which runs 300 and up (Wikipedia, Speedcore). The pad holds R&B to 80 to 90, the overlap of its two linked sources, so it calls Superstition at 99 faster: that is the mid-tempo side of R&B, not a different genre.

R&B drum pattern

The groove on this page runs over two bars of 16ths, counted 1 e and a:

Everything swings at 58 %. BPMcalc's tip for modern R&B is to start at 80 with 55 to 58 % swing on the 16ths, which is where this groove sits. For the old-school version, play the hats as straight 16ths and push the snare a few milliseconds late.

R&B chords

R&B harmony lives on sevenths and ninths: major seventh, minor seventh and minor ninth chords, often moving ii–V–I or rocking between two chords for a whole verse. If you have a line and want chords under it, chords for my melody plays three sets under what you hum.

What BPM for an old-school R&B DJ set?

For a dinner or restaurant set of old-school hip-hop and R&B, start around 85 to 95 and let it climb into the cluster at 99 to 102, where Crazy in Love, Superstition, Too Close and Fantasy sit close enough to mix with a small pitch move. Keep the 110-to-120 disco-era R&B for when people stand up. An 85 BPM R&B a cappella sits at exactly half of a 170 drum and bass track, the reason 90s R&B vocals keep turning up over jungle and drum and bass.

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.