About

Lo-fi Hip Hop Study Mix refers to a series of playlists featuring ambient trip-hop and hip-hop beats, often created for the purpose of studying or relaxing. They often feature noted producers such as Nujabes and J Dilla. While they appear on music streaming sites such as Soundcloud and Spotify, they are a notable trend on YouTube, as creators run 24-hour channels devoted to the style. In early 2018, parodies and jokes about the trend began appearing.

Origin

One of the earliest known YouTube videos featuring a lo-fi chill beats playlist was posted April 23rd, 2013 by Chillhop Music, a channel devoted to showcasing the style featured in such playlists. The playlist has gained over 2.8 million views.

Spread

In the following years, many more such playlists appeared on YouTube, with several gaining millions of views. For example, a playlist posted on April 12th, 2015 by ChillCow gained over 7.1 million views (shown below, left). Another playlist from Chillhop Music posted on September 7th, 2016 gained over 16 million views (shown below, right).

In 2017, the trend began to be married with anime and video game visuals. On January 26th, 2017, YouTuber Ambition uploaded a Cowboy Bebop mix that gained over 380,000 views (shown below, left). On March 17th, YouTuber AstroJens uploaded a mix with a still from the Studio Ghibli film Spirited Away serving as the visual, gaining over 131,000 views (shown below, right).

Over the course of the following year, creators began devoting 24-hour channels to the form. On January 28th, 2018, ChilledCow began streaming a lo-fi hip hop channel that runned until February 7th, 2018 (since deleted). Chillhop Records has been running a similar channel since March 21st, 2020. (shown below, right).

Parodies

The prevalence of the form has led to some parodies online. On February 6th, 2018, Polygon streamed a playlist for 11 hours which was indistinguishable from other channels save for periodic sound clips from Waluigi (shown below).

On January 29th, 2018, Twitter user Punkzbunny^[1] tweeted "And the Grammy goes to……. Lo-Fi Hip Hop Anime Chil Beats To Study and Relax To," gaining over 61,000 retweets and 156,000 likes (shown below).

Will Smith's Chill Beats to Quarantine To

On March 20th, 2020, Will Smith launched a parody of the videos entitled "chill beats to quarantine to." The video received more than 3.3 million views in less than two weeks (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References