Phonk is a rap subgenre that rebuilds the sound of 1990s Memphis tape rap — chopped and pitched-down vocals, TR-808 cowbells, heavy bass and a lo-fi crunch — under a name SpaceGhostPurrp put on it in the early 2010s. It is one of the newer entries in the rap subgenres family, and the one most people now meet through a drifting-car edit on TikTok.
Table of Contents
What phonk is
Four ingredients make a track phonk: vocals sampled from old Memphis records, a cowbell loop, 808 low end, and drums that move in half-time. The mix usually sounds slightly broken on purpose, like a tape played too many times.
Two things share the name. One is the Memphis-rooted sound that rap producers revived in the early 2010s. The other is drift phonk, a faster, electronic cousin that grew in Eastern Europe and took over the word after 2020. Splice notes that purists want “phonk” kept for the first, while other fans use it for both. That split explains most of the arguments below.
Why it’s called phonk
It is a respelling of “funk.” Splice describes the word as a deliberate misspelling that SpaceGhostPurrp coined for his own music, inspired by the G-funk he grew up on, and he called what he made “real Miami phonk.”
Note the geography. The word comes from Miami, not Memphis. SpaceGhostPurrp led Raider Klan out of Carol City, and Red Bull Music Academy described the crew as lo-fi and 90s-revivalist, often compared to a teenage Three 6 Mafia. His debut on 4AD, Mysterious Phonk: Chronicles of SpaceGhostPurrp, arrived on June 12, 2012. In a 2012 Okayplayer interview he named Three 6 Mafia and underground Memphis rap among the sounds he grew up on.
So the sound has Memphis parents and a Miami baptism. Nobody was calling the tapes “phonk” in 1993.
Where phonk came from: the Memphis tape scene
Red Bull Music Academy’s history of early Memphis rap is the best place to see the source material. In the early 1990s people bought cassette mixes of local rap, often unmixed, unmastered and without tracklists. DJ Spanish Fly sold his Volumes tapes through the front windows of the clubs where he played, and his hard 808 beats and darker subject matter pushed the city’s rap away from New York.
The names to know:
- DJ Spanish Fly: the tape-trunk pioneer above.
- DJ Squeeky: built beats with an SP-1200 and a keyboard in an Orange Mound bedroom. Early DJ Paul and Juicy J mixtapes reused his work.
- Tommy Wright III: five self-produced solo albums between 1992 and 2000, known for cowbell-driven beats and fast, aggressive rapping.
- Gangsta Pat: #1 Suspect (1990) was re-released by Atlantic in 1991, the first Memphis rap record issued by a major label.
- Three 6 Mafia: their 1995 debut Mystic Stylez was recorded on a shoestring, per NPR, and Splice credits Juicy J and Crunchy Black with the horror-tinged style that phonk keeps borrowing.
The lo-fi sound was not a plan. It was what distribution on tape did to the music, and Red Bull Music Academy notes that Wright III’s catalog survives mostly as distorted online uploads. Phonk turned that damage into a texture.
Houston runs alongside. DJ Screw’s chopped-and-screwed style, which slows records down, shaped the chopped hooks in phonk, per Splice. People conflate the two because phonk borrowed the technique, but the cities, the tempos and the eras are different.
The sonic recipe
- Chopped Memphis vocals. Short, pitched-down phrases from 90s records, looped like a hook.
- The cowbell. It is the 808’s synthesized cowbell. Splice says Memphis producers were using it years before Atlanta trap made it a mixtape staple. No single source record has been established, and I would distrust anyone who claims one.
- 808 bass and kick. Long, distorted, often gliding.
- Half-time drums. Wide-open patterns, a close relative of what trap did with the same machine.
- Tape crunch. Resampled lo-fi sources, hiss and warble, mixed hot.
On tempo, Splice puts classic phonk at 90 to 110 BPM, with recent versions up to 150. Drift phonk runs faster. The 808 itself is a craft topic of its own, covered across the craft hub.
The 2010s revival on SoundCloud
After Raider Klan, the sound moved online. Wikipedia’s account has the Memphis-style revival carried by Raider Klan members Denzel Curry and Amber London, Richmond’s Lil Ugly Mane and others, with Ryan Celsius spreading it through YouTube mixes. Lil Ugly Mane’s “Serious Shit,” on Mista Thug Isolation (February 11, 2012), is the example Splice picks: repitched, chopped vocals over a jazz saxophone and hard Memphis drums.
Between 2016 and 2018, phonk was among the most-listened genres on SoundCloud, with the hashtag trending each year, per the same Wikipedia account. Producers such as Soudiere and DJ Yung Vamp pushed a “rare phonk” strain that put trap drum programming under Memphis vocal samples.
Drift, Brazilian and the old-school branch
Drift phonk came out of Russia and Eastern Europe in the late 2010s: faster tempos, hard-clipped 808s, a cowbell playing the melody. Kaito Shoma’s “Scary Garry,” around 2016, is one of the earliest examples. TikTok pushed it in 2020, and The Conversation notes that the name comes from pairing the music with drift-racing videos. Spotify’s official phonk playlist arrived in May 2021 and was almost entirely drift phonk. Wikipedia credits Kordhell as the first phonk producer to reach Spotify’s top 500 artists.
Brazilian phonk is a name outsiders put on funk automotivo, a São Paulo strain of Brazilian funk. Splice traces the underlying funk mandelão sound to DJ GBR’s “Ritmo dos Fluxos” (2016) and puts Brazilian phonk at 130 to 160 BPM. The label took off after Slowboy, Crazy Mano and lucaf released “Brazilian Phonk Mano” in January 2023, which YourEDM reported at more than 74 million Spotify streams by July. It is contested. Splice quotes the dancer and historian Renate Prado calling it “ChatGPT funk,” a whitewashing of Brazilian funk, and says it is weighing whether to keep the tag.
The old-school branch is still there: artists who keep the Memphis recipe and ignore drift. Splice also lists phonk house and hardcore variants built on horrorcore and metal.
My opinion: the drift wave misreads the Memphis source, because it keeps the cowbell and drops the menace. But the misreading is why a 1993 aesthetic reached a global audience at all.
10 records that show the range
- Gangsta Pat, #1 Suspect (1990). Where Memphis rap meets a major label.
- DJ Squeeky, Volume 4 (1993). Rat-a-tat SP-1200 beats; the producer DJ Paul and Juicy J built on.
- Tommy Wright III, “Killa By Nature” (1992 to 2000 run). Cowbell-driven beats and distorted, lo-fi sound.
- Three 6 Mafia, Mystic Stylez (1995). The shoestring blueprint for dark Memphis rap.
- Lil Ugly Mane, “Serious Shit” (2012). Chopped vocals over jazz sax: the revival recipe.
- SpaceGhostPurrp, Mysterious Phonk (2012). Where the word gets its name.
- Kaito Shoma, “Scary Garry” (c. 2016). An early drift phonk track.
- DVRST, “Close Eyes” (February 1, 2021). Samples Project Pat’s “Still Ridin’ Clean” (2002) and a Lil Bay verse from DJ Sound’s “Down with the Click” (1995). Spread through TikTok’s “Titan Glow Up” meme, and is certified Platinum in the US.
- Kordhell, “Murder in My Mind” (January 21, 2022). Drift phonk at its biggest: No. 7 on Billboard’s Hot Dance/Electronic Songs and Platinum in the US.
- Slowboy, Crazy Mano and lucaf, “Brazilian Phonk Mano” (2023). The track that gave the Brazilian branch its English name.
FAQ
Why is phonk so popular? TikTok. Drift phonk took off there in 2020, and the Conversation article ties that to lockdown-era social media growth. A short, looping hook suits a short clip. Splice reports that Google searches for “phonk” hit a five-year high in July 2025.
Is phonk hip-hop? At the root, yes: it comes from Memphis rap and its sampling habits. Splice notes that drift phonk often moves away from rapping entirely, so the answer shifts by branch. It sits inside the wider hip-hop family tree either way.
What BPM is phonk? Splice gives 90 to 110 for classic phonk, up to 150 for recent versions, and 130 to 160 for Brazilian phonk. Count in half-time and the numbers mislead you.
How do you tell drift phonk from Brazilian phonk? Check the tempo and the groove. Per Splice, drift phonk pairs fast tempos with a cowbell lead, while Brazilian phonk runs 130 to 160 BPM on a Brazilian funk groove, often with Portuguese vocals.
Play Mystic Stylez, then “Close Eyes,” and you will hear the whole distance. Tell me which one you would have called phonk.
— Davood Tavakoli, Cyphlore