Memphis Dark
Dark Memphis flavor: an 808 in C with a slide into it, the G and a high D#, a boom kick and a dirt kick tuned an octave clear of them, grime snare, dull 808 hats and a dark cymbal. 140 BPM and nothing lifted from any tape.
Play the pads below (keyboard works too), hit Play to hear the kit's signature groove, or open the Sequencer tab and program your own beat — then share it as a link or take the WAVs with you. Every sound is produced in-house, nothing resampled, nothing to clear.
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SFZ mapping
Universal sampler format — loads in Sforzando, TAL-Sampler, Bitwig, Reaper and most samplers. Pads mapped from C1 up.
DownloadDecentSampler preset
For the free DecentSampler plugin (VST3/AU) — open the preset and the whole kit is playable instantly.
DownloadMIDI groove
The kit's 4-bar signature pattern (140 BPM, with fill) as a MIDI file — drag it into your DAW on the mapped kit and it plays.
DownloadThe cassette sound that wouldn't die
In the early 90s, Memphis rap was a local secret traded on hissy cassettes: Three 6 Mafia's DJ Paul and Juicy J, Tommy Wright III and a constellation of bedroom producers making dark, minor-key loops over 808s, mixed murky and duplicated tape-to-tape until the noise became part of the music. That lo-fi menace turned out to be one of the most influential sounds in hip-hop — crunk grew out of it, and decades later phonk built an entire genre on worshipping it.
The drum aesthetic is heavy and dull on purpose: 808 bass that drones more than it bounces, kicks with dirt baked in, snares that crack through murk, hats that sit dark in the mix instead of sparkling. Where trap shines its top end, Memphis smears it.
This kit recreates that palette from scratch — no tape rips, no samples to clear: an 808 in C with a slide into it, the G, and a high D# to answer with, a boom kick and a dirt kick tuned to C2 and G2 so they never land on a bass note, grime snare and dirt clap, two wood-and-crack rims, dull 808 hats with a long open hat, shaker, low perc and a dark modal cymbal. Suggested tempo 140, half-time.
Memphis Dark — questions
What's the difference between Memphis rap and phonk?
Memphis rap is the original 90s source — dark tape-era beats from artists like Three 6 Mafia and Tommy Wright III. Phonk is the internet-era genre built on sampling and imitating those tapes. This kit gives you the Memphis palette as original sounds, so you get the flavor without sampling anyone's cassette.
How do I get the murky tape sound?
Roll off the high end harder than feels safe, saturate the whole drum bus, and consider summing to mono — the 90s tapes effectively were. The kit's sounds are already dark, so the processing pushes an open door.
What BPM should a Memphis-style beat be?
130–145 BPM in half-time covers most of it; this kit suggests 140. The 808 drone works as a sustained bed under the whole bar — tune it to your track's key and let it hum.