Word.ws English Dictionary

mumble rap

mumble rap noun: a microgenre of hip hop with mumbling or unclear vocal delivery by artists, and may generally refer to rappers who do not share the genre's typical emphasis on lyricism.

Noun

mumble rap (uncountable)

  1. A microgenre of hip hop with mumbling or unclear vocal delivery by artists, and may generally refer to rappers who do not share the genre's typical emphasis on lyricism.
    • Derided by some, artists such as Future and Migos have been wildly successful mumble rap artists.2018, Nick J. Sciullo, Communicating Hip-Hop: How Hip-Hop Culture Shapes Popular Culture, page 40
    • "Mumble rap" is the most active and vigorous scapegoat rap has had in years, in part because the internet — particularly social media — has created a landscape for it to thrive and be a hotly debated topic, engaging in the ideas of language and whether or not rappers should have to adhere to them...2019, Hanif Abdurraqib, Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest, page 201

Examples of mumble rap in a sentence

  • The logical culmination of this tendency is today's mumble rap, featuring rhythmically monotonous phrasal and verbal repetition, strongly auto-tuned and, in some cases, literally mumbled.2020, Macklin Smith, Aurko Joshi, Rhymes in the Flow: How Rappers Flip the Beat, page 256:
  • There was an exciting proliferation of punk rap, mumble rap, emo rap and trap-influenced SoundCloud artists.2020, Adrian Besley, Billie Eilish: From e-girl to Icon, Michael O'Mara Books, →ISBN:

Origin of mumble rap

From mumble + rap. First coined by hip hop artist Wiz Khalifa in 2016 during an interview.

Questions about mumble rap

What does mumble rap mean?
Mumble rap means a microgenre of hip hop with mumbling or unclear vocal delivery by artists, and may generally refer to rappers who do not share the genre's typical emphasis on lyricism.
How do you use mumble rap in a sentence?
The logical culmination of this tendency is today's mumble rap, featuring rhythmically monotonous phrasal and verbal repetition, strongly auto-tuned and, in some cases, literally mumbled.
What part of speech is mumble rap?
Mumble rap is a noun.

Words near mumble rap in the dictionary

  1. Mumbaikars
  2. Mumbannar
  3. Mumbil
  4. mumblage
  5. mumble
  6. mumble rap
  7. mumble-bee
  8. mumble-bees
  9. mumble-matins
  10. mumble-the-peg
  11. Mumblebone Plain

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mumble rap (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “mumble rap.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mumble_rap. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.