Trap music is a subgenre of Southern rap that originated in the early 1990s. It grew in the 2000s to become a mainstream sensation, eventually reaching ubiquity in the mid-late 2010s and frequently having songs top the Billboard hip hop charts. It is typified by double or triple-time sub-divided hi-hats, heavy kick drums from the Roland TR-808 drum machine, layered synthesizers and an overall dark, ominous or bleak atmosphere. The strong influence of the sound led to other artists within the genre to move towards the trap sound, with a notable example being Jay-Z and Kanye West on their joint song, "H•A•M". Other artists not within the hip hop genre have also experimented with trap, such as "7/11" by Beyoncé and "Dark Horse" by Katy Perry featuring Juicy J.

On July 17, 2017, Forbes reported that hip hop/R&B (which Nielsen SoundScan classifies as being the same genre) had usurped rock as the most consumed musical genre, becoming the most popular genre in music for the first time in U.S. history.

In the 2010s, Atlanta hip-hop dominated the mainstream.