Trip-Hop

Trip-Hop is hip-hop with the attitude levels set on low. A moody, downtempo style that draws on influences from soul, reggae, jazz and rap, Trip-Hop rose out of England's former slave port, Bristol. Massive Attack introduced the subgenre with Blue Lines in 1991, but their Bristol contemporaries Portishead -- who had the international hit "Sour Times" -- and the gravel-voiced Tricky took the seductively eerie, interior sounds into the mainstream. With its breakbeat-based rhythms, looped samples and languid aura, Trip-Hop is soothing music for the angst-ridden.