Drumless

Drumless is a style of Hip Hop production pioneered in the early 2010s characterized by a lack of drums or minimal, subtle percussion typically built around a single, looped sample. Unlike most hip hop music defined by its strong percussive and rhythmic elements, the instrumentals of drumless are stripped down to the bare sample without many additional components. While other sample-based hip hop is traditionally produced by sampling and looping the strong percussion break section of a song, producers of the drumless style tend to rely more on samples that lack heavy percussion or with completely absent drums. The production also lacks the typical use of a drum machine or the addition of heavier kicks, hi-hats, snares, or basslines to reinforce the beat of the original sample. The percussion, if present, is usually left untouched from the original sample and occasionally filtered out from the audio mix.