If you’re addicted to sub bass, booty shakin’, doing the Miley Cyrus and bouncing to half-time hi-hats, Pandora offers three stations to customize your low-end experience. Trap, Trap Rap and TWERK each showcase a specific sound for our listeners. In a world where hip-hop and EDM fuse together to create a new sound, have you ever pondered the difference between trap and twerk? Want to know what you’ll hear on Pandora’s Trap Rap station? Our curators get to the bottom of the 808.
Let’s take a look at where trap and twerk started, then listen to where it’s going. Both styles focus on samples from the classic Roland 808 drum machine, syncopated rhythms with heavy backbeat handclaps that are influenced by Miami Bass, Southern Rap and New Orleans Bounce.
If you like mind numbing bass, car alarms and festival decibels, Trap is for you. International producers are embracing the sounds of Atlanta to create something new. Artists like Yellow Claw, Flosstradamus, Diplo, UZ and Bro Safari have taken the original sound and connected the dots from hip-hop to EDM. Trap has fewer lyrics, mostly sampled and pitched down with a heavy electro house and dubstep influence. The beats per minute are around 70, but are produced with BPM set to 140 for that double-time feel. You’ll hear plenty of bass drops – and of course it’s best heard on a huge sound system.
If you grind to hand claps, bouncy beats, 808s and Lil Jon yelling at you, you’ll love Trap’s sped-up cousin TWERK. Its popularity first emerged as strip club music with faster tempos, dirty lyrics and a heavy influence from Miami bass and Baltimore club music. TWERK generally clocks in around 100 BPM, although as EDM producers and hip-hop MCs hit the studio together, the sound of this new booty music is all over the map. Mixtapes from DJ Godfather and artists like DJ Snake, Lil Jon, T-pain, Travis Porter and Sage The Gemini can be heard on the TWERK station at Pandora.
If you throw your elbows to songs about making money, outlaw cooking and being stuck between your enemies, the police and your homies; Trap Rap is for you. Trap Rap features slower tempos, trippy soundscapes, a focus on lyrics and a hardcore rap influence from the South. The BPM floats around 60 to 70. And you’ll hear artists like Gucci Mane, Lil Boosie, T.I., Future, Juicy J and Young Jeezy schooling you on life in Atlanta, Miami, LA or the Bay.
Whether you’re getting ready for the club, or just need a few minutes of booty-bouncing to lift your spirits, Pandora’s Trap, TWERK and Trap Rap stations will get you there. Thumbs up for what?!?
