Hip-hop is a music genre combining creative beats and influential lyrics. Therefore, it is considered to be the most powerful music genre by its addicts. Colored artists lead this genre, so they rap about life struggles as a person of color in their music. Gunfights in the back streets, challenges in their career, poverty, and racism are some of the themes of their songs. The genre has many sub-genres and one of them is trap which is the relatively happy side of hip-hop. Trap music harmonizes high and changing beats with lyrics that generally only make sense to those who have written it. But why do people listen to trap, if the lyrics are meaningless when they come together?

Trap is powerful. Is it a coincidence that many of us observed our friends on social media sharing their gym pictures with a high-beat trap song attached? Trap loads people with energy, according to its junkies, since songs of this genre are pretty boosting, thanks to the mixing and dropping beats and empowering lyrics. So, it is no surprise for people to feel more dedicated when listening to trap, and that’s why we have seen so many athletes online sharing their Spotify playlists full of trap music with their fans because the ones that need that energy boost are nobody but them. In the app Spotify only, the abundance of gym or workout-related playlists created by the Spotify team or its users prove that trap is the first genre that comes to mind when thinking of sports.

Trap is catchy. Beats from different trap songs are easily distinguished from each other by an average listener, and that’s the case for most of the chorus from the popular songs of the genre. “Mask Off” by Future is a great example. While the beginning beat resembles a whistle played by a wind instrument, the chorus is formed with lyrics such as "Mask on, mask off, chasing cheap, Percosets, Molly Percosets…" Why mask on and off, and who is Molly Percosets? When you think of those lyrics altogether, they don't actually mean anything but are quite memorable.

Trap makes people happy (most of the time). In trap songs, rappers usually babble about things that make people feel happy such as cars, money, lovers, friends… Even when they rap about sad subjects, they do it in a way that is so complicated that listeners can not make that connection and understand what they mean. It is nearly impossible to feel bad while listening to trap songs because of that. An example to prove that point is Drake’s “Passionfruit”. It has many trap remixes, and the beat is so happy and energetic that when people listen to it, they do not even recognize that it is actually a pretty sad song having lyrics about heartbreak and a lost lover.

Some of the most known artists of the genre are Drake, J Cole, Travis Scott, XXXtentacion, Migos, and Future, and it is probable that you know or at least heard one of them. Trap is a trendy genre that makes those names easily recognizable worldwide, and now you know why. If you want to dive into trap music, I suggest you do it as soon as possible. Also, you can start from the flaming hot new album of J. Cole, “The Off-Season”.