Trip hop is a music genre defined as a psychedelic fusion of hip hop and electronica with slow tempos and an atmospheric sound. The style emerged as a more experimental variant of breakbeat from the Bristol sound scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s, incorporating influences from jazz, soul, funk, dub, rap, as well as sampling from movie soundtracks and other eclectic sources.
Pioneering trip hop acts include Massive Attack, UNKLE, Tricky, and Portishead. The term was first coined in a 1994 Mixmag piece about American producer DJ Shadow. Trip hop achieved commercial success in the 1990s, and has been described as "Europe's alternative choice in the second half of the '90s".