Crunk

What it is

Atlanta and Memphis at the turn of the millennium, when Lil Jon took the Memphis tape sound, cleaned it up, doubled the shouting and made it a national format. Crunk is party music built for volume: a handful of elements, a riff that never modulates, and a chanted hook designed to be answered by a room. The tempo is written at 140 but the backbeat sits on beat 3, so it moves at half that and every hit gets twice the space. Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz, Three 6 Mafia's crossover records and the early Ying Yang Twins run the style; the Neptunes and Timbaland borrowed pieces of it.

What it sounds like

Loud, empty and hard. A clap or a layered clap and snare landing once a bar with reverb behind it, an 808 kick firing in fast syncopated bursts, and a cowbell or a square-wave synth stab playing a two-note riff on repeat. Hi-hats sit on eighths rather than sixteenths, which keeps the top end open for the shouting. There is almost no harmony: one minor riff, sometimes only two notes, and a low string or brass patch doubling it. Everything is compressed to within an inch of its life.

Key elements

• The half-time clapOne backbeat per bar on beat 3, usually a clap layered with a short snare, with a bright half-second reverb behind it. It is the only thing marking the bar.
• 808 burstsThe kick fires in clusters, two or three hits within a beat, then leaves a gap. It behaves like a rhythm part rather than a foundation and it is mixed loud enough to distort.
• The riffTwo or three notes on a square or saw synth, or an 808 cowbell, repeated for the entire track without changing. Simplicity is a functional choice: a crowd has to be able to shout over it.
• Eighth-note hatsHalf the hat density of trap, which is what leaves the mid and top open for the vocal. A crunk track with sixteenth hats turns into something else.
• The chantA shouted, gang-vocal hook of a few words, doubled and hard-panned. The drum pattern clears the second beat entirely and leaves the fourth almost as bare, specifically so it fits.

How to get them

• 808Short decay, around 300 milliseconds, so the burst pattern stays articulate. Saturate it until the harmonics are obvious and let the clipping show. A long trap 808 will smear the clusters into one note.
• ClapLayer an 808 clap with a tight snare 6dB down, send both to a bright plate at 0.6 seconds, and high-pass the return at 500Hz. Compress the reverb hard so the tail slams rather than fades.
• RiffSquare wave, no filter movement, one octave doubling below. Or the TR-808 cowbell, which is where a large slice of the canon actually got it. Keep it dry and centred.
• HatsEighths only, alternating around 80 and 58. Add sixteenths only in the last beat of the second bar as a lift, and nowhere else.
• MixFour elements, all loud, nothing subtle. Bus compress at 6dB of gain reduction with a fast attack. Crunk records were mastered to be the loudest thing on a club system and the distortion is part of the design.
• SwingNone. Set it to 50 percent. The 808 clusters get their swagger from where they are placed and how hard they hit, and any shuffle applied on top makes them sound drunk rather than heavy.

Reference points

Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz, Three 6 Mafia, Ying Yang Twins, Pastor Troy, David Banner and the Trillville records. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements or as anyone to imitate.