What Is Plugg? The Atlanta Sound That Built Rap’s Underground

If you have heard rage, jerk, or pluggnb, you have already heard the children of plugg. Before any of those scenes existed, a small group of Atlanta teenagers were uploading beats to SoundCloud built on one idea: deep 808s, a simple sparkly melody, and as much empty space as possible. They tagged the files with a single shouted word, “Plug!”, and accidentally named a genre that would shape a decade of underground rap. That genre is plugg. Plugg is a subgenre of trap that emerged in the mid-2010s through SoundCloud, defined by deep, thick 808 basslines, sparkly and minimal melodies, sparse drums, and a dreamy, laid-back, almost ambient atmosphere. It was originated around 2013 by the Atlanta producer collective BeatPluggz, and it became the seed for a whole family of internet rap sounds.

Plugg matters far beyond its own streams. It is the parent genre of pluggnb, rage, and jerk, three of the most influential underground sounds of the 2020s. Understanding plugg is the key to understanding all of them.

Origins: BeatPluggz and the “Plug!” Tag

Plugg is a subgenre of trap, but it took trap in the opposite direction from the mainstream. Where commercial trap was loud and busy, plugg was minimal, spacey, and dreamy. One critic described it as best heard alone, “as a day-long trance in your isolated abode.”

The genre gets its name from the “Plug!” producer tag used on SoundCloud by the BeatPluggz collective starting around 2013. The tag was originally “Plugs” before it was shortened to “Plug,” and both spellings, plugg and plug, are still used for the genre. The Atlanta producers MexikoDro and StoopidXool are the names most associated with originating the sound, though MexikoDro has been careful to spread the credit. As he put it in one interview, “Pluggz created this sound. BeatPluggz: me, dashawn, StoopidXool, PoloBoyShawty and all that were doing this sound.”

Plugg picked up its early following entirely online, a SoundCloud-native scene with no radio support and no label structure. That internet-first nature is why plugg never really died, and why it kept mutating into new forms for the next decade.

The Zaytoven Influence: Where Plugg Drums Come From

Plugg’s rhythmic foundation traces directly to Zaytoven, the Atlanta producer behind much of Gucci Mane’s classic catalog. Multiple sources point to Zaytoven’s percussion style as the blueprint for plugg drumming: sparse, bouncy, and swinging, with a clap on the second and fourth beats and hi-hats that come and go in occasional clusters rather than steady rolls.

Zaytoven built that feel using an MPC2000 sampler and drum sounds passed to him by his mentor JT the Bigga Figga, with a swing rooted in late-1990s West Coast hip-hop. As Zaytoven himself said, “as long as the 808 was nice and bumping, everything else was just extra.” Plugg producers took that philosophy and pushed it further: keep the 808 deep, keep the melody pretty, and leave everything else open. Beyond Zaytoven, plugg drew on Gucci Mane, Project Pat, Juicy J, the snap group D4L, and even the Paper Mario video game soundtrack.

How Plugg Sounds: The Sonic Blueprint

Plugg is built on a few core elements, and its identity comes as much from what it leaves out as what it puts in.

Deep 808 basslines. The 808 is the heart of plugg, described variously as thick, hard, bumping, and deep. Everything else is built around it.

Sparkly melodies. Plugg leans on simple, catchy, slightly video-game-like melodies, often on bright synths, bells, or keys. As producer CashCache put it, plugg is “simple chords, hard-hitting 808s and repetitive, thoughtful, addictive melodies.”

Zaytoven-style drums. Sparse, bouncy, swinging percussion with few hi-hats and frequent beat skips, where the rhythm cuts in and out across the track.

Space and atmosphere. Plugg is minimal and airy by design. The empty space is the point, giving the genre its dreamy, lush, jazzy mood.

Melodic vocals. Vocally, plugg ranges from purely instrumental beats to mellow singing or relaxed rapping, usually melodic and low-pressure rather than aggressive.

Famously, plugg beats are fast to make. MexikoDro once said he spends about 15 minutes on a beat, and the style is easy enough to replicate that YouTube tutorials promise to teach it in as little as six minutes. That accessibility is a big part of why plugg spread so widely online.

Plugg Goes Mainstream: The 2016 Wave

Plugg’s first brush with the mainstream came around 2015 and 2016. Playboi Carti was the first major artist to embrace the BeatPluggz sound, recording his breakthrough “Broke Boi” over a plugg beat, along with tracks like “Money Counter” and “Don’t Tell Nobody.” He was joined by Rich the Kid, Kodak Black, Lil Yachty, Famous Dex, and Yung Bans, who cut plugg records such as “Plug,” “Hella O’s,” and “New Wave.” Rapper Nebu Kiniza even scored a platinum hit, “Gassed Up,” over the same beat used on Rich the Kid’s “Plug.”

That mainstream moment faded fast as those rappers moved on to other producers. Carti had a creative breakup with MexikoDro, later described as “ugly,” and moved on to work with Pi’erre Bourne, who was not making plugg. But while the spotlight left, plugg did not. It kept evolving in the underground, and its next phase would prove far more influential than the first.

The Plugg Family Tree: Pluggnb, Rage, and Jerk

Plugg’s real legacy is everything it created. From roughly 2017 onward, the genre branched into a whole family of sounds that now dominate underground rap.

Pluggnb added contemporary R&B chords and crooned, auto-tuned vocals, turning plugg soft and romantic. Rage took the opposite path, adding distortion and electronic intensity. As MexikoDro and producer Popstar Benny have both said, “rage beats are just plugg beats with more electronic influence.” Jerk, the New York microgenre, kept plugg’s bright synths but ran them through twitchy, staggered drums.

Wikipedia formally lists rage, jerk, digicore, and sigilkore as derivative forms of plugg. In other words, a sound made by Atlanta teenagers on SoundCloud became the common ancestor of much of the 2020s rap underground. That is what makes plugg the trunk of the tree rather than just another branch.

Plugg Subgenres: Dark Plugg, Hyperplugg, and More

Plugg has also split internally. Dark plugg trades the bright, dreamy mood for something colder and more menacing. Hyperplugg, which began trending on SoundCloud and TikTok around 2022 via producer-artist Myspacemark, injects hyperpop influence into the plugg template. There is also ambient plugg, and a “sleepy plugg” style pushed by producer CashCache that leans heavier on lounge and jazz. The list keeps growing, which is exactly what you would expect from an online genre that is fast to make and easy to remix.

Plugg Around the World: A Global Underground

Because plugg lived on SoundCloud from day one, it spread internationally faster than most American rap subgenres. France built an early and respected plugg scene led by producer Serane, who ended up collaborating with American originators like MexikoDro and StoopidXool after they noticed his work.

The Russian-language internet embraced plugg especially hard. Face is commonly cited as the first Russian rapper to record over plugg beats, in 2016, with several tracks produced by MexikoDro himself. Boulevard Depo was another early adopter, and Big Baby Tape pushed the sound into the spotlight with his 2018 EP Hoodrich Tales. The genre has since reached Argentina and beyond, proof that an internet-born sound belongs to no single city.

Why Plugg Matters: The Most Important Sound You Have Not Heard Of

Plugg rarely tops charts under its own name, but few sounds of the last decade have been more quietly influential. It gave the underground a template that was cheap to make, easy to share, and endlessly mutable, and from that template grew pluggnb, rage, and jerk. Trace almost any weird, melodic, internet-native rap sound of the 2020s back far enough and you tend to land on plugg.

For anyone following where trap went after its mainstream peak, plugg is the missing link. It is the bridge between Atlanta’s classic sound and the splintered, global underground of today. Full genre coverage lives in our news archive.

Essential Plugg Tracks and Figures