Phonk music

Phonk is a hip hop subgenre known for chopped-and-screwed lo-fi production, vintage hip-hop samples, and a strong funk influence, layered over cowbell-driven drum patterns and deep bass. It grew out of 1990s Memphis rap and has become one of the most recognizable sounds in short-form video, especially in its faster, more aggressive drift phonk form used for car and workout edits.

Phonk's sound traces back to 1990s Memphis, Tennessee, where hip hop artists like Three 6 Mafia paired half-time, drum-machine beats with cowbell-inflected 808s and vintage samples, paving the way for horrorcore, trap, and phonk. The name came about 20 years later: Florida rapper SpaceGhostPurrp coined "phonk" as slang for "funk" when he titled his 2012 album Mysterious Phonk. Read Epidemic Sound's full phonk Genre Deep Dive for more on its evolution into drift phonk.

Phonk's booming bass, chopped vocal hooks, and hard-hitting drops make it a natural fit for fast-cut edits, especially car drift clips, workout videos, and transition-heavy short-form content. Its most viral form, Drift Phonk, gained traction on platforms like TikTok and YouTube and has since overtaken the original 1990s-rooted phonk sound in mainstream recognition.

Yes. Phonk tracks are copyrighted just like any other music, regardless of how heavily they sample or remix older recordings. Downloading or using a phonk track without a proper license carries the same copyright risk as any other genre. To use phonk music safely in monetized or public content, you need a valid license, such as an Epidemic Sound subscription.

You can find and download royalty-free phonk music through Epidemic Sound, a subscription-based music licensing platform with more than 55,000 tracks. It isn't a free MP3 download site: after a free trial, ongoing access to the catalog requires a paid subscription rather than a one-time free file. Getting started takes four steps:

1. Start a free trial
2. Choose a subscription plan
3. Connect (safelist) your social media channels
4. Download and use any phonk track in the catalog

Tracks you publish while your subscription is active stay cleared for use, even after you cancel later.

Phonk is the broader genre, rooted in 1990s Memphis rap's lo-fi samples, cowbell-driven 808s, and funk influence. Drift Phonk is a more aggressive subgenre that emerged in Russia in the late 2010s, closer in feel to EDM, with thicker basslines, higher tempos, and slicker production built for car drift edits. The two are closely related, but some phonk purists don't consider drift phonk "real" phonk, since it shares little of the original Southern hip-hop DNA.