Memphis Rap
The 7 Best Memphis Rap
Tracks of All Time
Memphis in the early nineties, on cassettes sold hand to hand: murky four-track tapes, horror-film samples, triplet hi-hats and a chanted hook — the blueprint for trap, made a decade before anyone in Atlanta used the word.
- Origin
- Memphis, Tennessee, 1993
- Tempo
- 130–150 BPM
- Also known as
- memphis horrorcore, three 6 mafia, phonk
- Tracks
- 7
- Updated
- 2026-08-31
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Number 1: Tear Da Club Up Thugs / Slob on My Knob
1999
Originally a 1992 Juicy J tape track, and one of the most quoted verses in Southern rap. The triplet flow here is what Migos was doing twenty years later.
Number 2: Three 6 Mafia / Mystic Stylez
1995 · Prophet
The album that made the sound a scene, and it sounds like it was recorded in a basement because it was. Occult imagery played completely straight.
Number 3: DJ Squeeky / Sweet Robbery
1994
Squeeky's tapes are where the slowed, chopped, hi-hat-driven Memphis beat is first fully formed. The most influential producer almost nobody outside the city can name.
Number 4: Tommy Wright III / Playa Hataz
1996
Self-released, self-produced, self-distributed. The tape underground's purest practitioner, and rediscovered wholesale by the phonk producers of the 2010s.
Number 5: Gangsta Boo / Where Dem Dollas At
1998 · Relativity
The First Lady of Three 6, and the hardest voice on the roster. She held her own in a crew that gave her no room to.
Number 6: Three 6 Mafia / Late Nite Tip
1997 · Relativity
The melodic side, and evidence the crew could write a hook when it suited them. They won an Academy Award nine years later, which nobody predicted.
Number 7: DJ Paul / North Memphis Area
1994
Before the group consolidated, when the tapes were still local geography set to a beat. Paul's production is already unmistakable.
Also on 1994