Hardcore hip hop
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Hardcore rap is a harder genre of hip-hop that often uses profanity on faster beats. It forms the East Coast counterpart to gangsta rap in the Western and Southern states of America. The lyrics deal with violence, drugs, guns and women. The releases are often subject to censorship. It is controversial to what extent hardcore rap is interwoven with the emergence of gangsta rap. Some authors see the influx of commercially undiscovered East Coast musicians such as T-Razor or Mykel-Chyk to Los Angeles in the early 1980s as causal and formative for the emerging gangsta rap.
The decisive feature of hardcore rap are the beats. Speeds of over 100 bpm (some tracks are reminiscent of Big Beat), usually very short and above all many loops mixed together are decisive for this style. Examples are N.W.A. and the Bomb Squad productions with lyrics by Chuck D or Ice Cube. Another characteristic of hardcore rap are the chosen samples, which sound deliberately dirty and sometimes annoying, such as mowing sounds of power scythes, interference from transmitters, or the screaming of spectators of old live recordings, such as in "Louder Than A Bomb" by Public Enemy.
Lyrically, hardcore rap is also often more political and socially critical (see Conscious Rap) instead of simply glorifying a criminal lifestyle like gangsta rap.
