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Making a new hip-hop beat often consists of digging endlessly for fire samples. And while that is a valid approach, these days, there are dozens of powerful tools that can help you make more compelling rhythms, come up with melodies and hooks, and create a lush musical bed for your dope rhymes faster.
In this guide, we’ll be looking at the best hip hop VST plugins that will take your productions to the next level.
Contents
Spire by Reveal Sound – Best Overall
How about a classic, powerful soft synth that has inspired countless electronic music producers and has graced many more projects? Don’t worry – Reveal Sound’s Spire is hip-hop friendly too, thus its inclusion here.
We lovingly refer to synths like Spire as “kitchen sink” synths because… what are they missing, if anything? Oscillators, filters, effects, modulation, steppers, arpeggiator, presets, multiple themes – it’s all here.
And with that kind of functionality, would you honestly expect Spire to sound horrible? Because, obviously, it doesn’t.
The fact that Spire has been around a while doesn’t seem to have impacted its reputation among producers. This plugin is still talked about, still loved, and of course, it still sounds amazing too.
And that’s the main thing to know. Spire is consistent and reliable, and it just sounds great.
Learn more: Plugin Boutique
Ozone 9 Advanced by iZotope – Best Premium Option
While making great music is about coming up with dazzling ideas, recording killer hooks and riffs, finding samples that are matched to your lyrical content, spitting dope rhymes, and more, there’s another aspect to recording you simply can’t ignore if you want to drop tracks your fans won’t be able to get enough of – postproduction.
Postproduction generally encompasses editing, mixing, and mastering. But in this case, we’re focusing specifically on mastering, because that’s what iZotope’s Ozone 9 was built for.
Grammy-award winning producer Butch Vid called Ozone his go-to mastering tool. DJ Zinc thought of it as his one-stop mastering tool. And Grammy-award winning producer Greg Wells found it powerful and easy to work with.
With a machine learning powered workflow, Ozone 9 allows you to achieve balance, deep low end, instrument separation in real time, and more, with velocity. The Master Assistant can even help you tap into your desired results.
With Ozone 9, you can control your lows, mids, and highs with the spectral shaper, low-end focus modules, and other tools. You can match your reference track with relative ease, use Tonal Balance Control 2 to talk to other iZotope plugins, and more.
Use the master rebalance, low end focus, imager, equalizer, track referencing, maximizer, spectral shaper, dynamic EQ, exciter, dynamics, vintage modules (tape, limiter, EQ, compressor), and more, to dial in your mastering with confidence and reassurance.
Obviously, hiring a mastering engineer is one of the most popular ways to get your song mastered. And this is still the preferred way for many. That said, iZotope’s Ozone 9 is the kind of plugin that can help you master your tracks without outside help, and that makes it noteworthy.
Learn more: Plugin Boutique
Serum by Xfer Records – Best Budget Option
Xfer Records’ Serum has earned the right to be called a titan in the soft synth space.
Serum is incredibly versatile, with sounds suited to every genre imaginable. It’s loaded with the most popular features you’ll find in your favorite synth VSTs. Serum also lets you import wavetables or create your own from scratch.
Additionally, this synth features internal resampling, as well as visualizers for oscillators and filters (which can help you see what’s happening to your sound as you’re adjusting parameters – this is a solid, beginner friendly feature).
Serum is easily one of the best synths available. And we make no qualms about it being our best overall pick. Check out the video if you’re in doubt.
Learn more: Splice
Omnisphere (2.8) by Spectrasonics
Hailed by many a producer as one of the best – if not the best – synthesizers, Omnisphere is nothing short of a tour de force.
The presets are perfect for ambient pads as well as film and TV scores. It’s well-loved by hip-hop producers too. It’s gotten to the point where most popular media and hip-hop music you can find contains sounds from Omnisphere.
With over 14,000 sounds, Omnisphere’s versatility and power is a thing of legend. You’d be hard pressed to tap into even half of what it’s fully capable of.
If there’s a downside, it’s that you will not find Omnisphere at a discount price virtually ever. Then again, there isn’t exactly a viable alternative. If you want Omnisphere, Omnisphere is what you need. And that makes it our best premium option.
Learn more: Spectrasonics
Diversion by DS Audio
When it comes to synths, choice is of the essence. This isn’t to suggest you need every synth under the sun to make great music. But it doesn’t hurt to have two or three at your disposal, as most producers do.
DS Audio’s Diversion was designed for use with any electronic music genre. Computer Magazine gave it a nine out of 10 and liked its feature set, sound quality, presets, and tonal controls.
Diversion comes with four oscillators and a variety of waveforms (FM and RM synthesis, wave shaping and filtering techniques included). Each waveform comes with two parameters X and Y, which let you explore new tonal possibilities.
Also included is a wavetable editor, which allows you to load arbitrary single cycle WAV files. You can also edit waveforms in time and frequency space while applying different effects.
Diversion features two bus processors, which come with a stereo filter, distortion, and LO-FI section. These contribute to the vast array of sounds Diversion can produce, including Trance, Psy, Dub Step, and Ambient.
The FX section allows you to stack up to eight effect instances. Diversion can be modulated with four LFOs, four ADSR envelopes, four MSEGs, and one XY controller (Master Morph). Automation and MIDI controllers are supported.
There’s a 32-step arpeggiator / sequencer and a 16-step gate module as well, and Diversion uses oversampling up to 8x in a whole processing path, except for the FX section.
Diversion is a nicely designed synth. The interface is balanced and easy to understand, so long as you don’t get overwhelmed by the sheer number of parameters. The default sound isn’t anything special, and the magic mostly lies in tweaking yourself.
There are 380 presets, but some users felt the synth could have used a few more. And to be fair, some of the presets aren’t great. If you don’t mind creating your own patches, though, you’ll probably have a lot of fun with this synth.
If you’re only going to buy one soft synth, this probably isn’t the one, but it can help you flush out your synth collection with a variety of unique and interesting sounds.
Diversion is available for Windows and Mac.
Learn more: Plugin Boutique
SlowMo by Initial Audio
Half speed style effects have been getting some serious street cred in hip-hop as of late, and Initial Audio’s SlowMo is one of those affordable, utility VST plugins that’s going to gift you with the ability to manipulate time as you please.
Now, this isn’t a fancy, versatile multi-purpose plugin by any means, and based on the price point, we wouldn’t expect that.
But it can take your mixes, instruments, vocals, and effect channels and slow them down by 100% in real time. The built-in oversampling helps to preserve the quality of your audio without any additional help. SlowMo’s interface is also resizable.
While there isn’t much more to it, for modern day hip-hop and trap, this is a necessity. And while it is not a synth, and it can’t do anything our best overall and best premium options can do, SlowMo is great at what it does.
This plugin is Mac and Windows compatible and can be found at Plugin Boutique.
Learn more: Plugin Boutique
MELLOW 2 by ujam
Virtually every hip-hop producer would agree. Bass is never an afterthought – it plays a critical role in any mix.
Developer ujam is well-known for creating realistic sounding, versatile virtual instruments, and their MELLOW 2 is a must-have if you want to take advantage of the mellow, smooth sound of a fingered acoustic bass.
MELLOW 2 is the latest iteration on MELLOW, and it comes with 20 new styles, 30 new presets, 15 finisher multi-effect modes, MIDI drag and drop, and backwards compatibility. It also comes with 60 styles and 1,380 phrases.
Now, your impression might be that acoustic bass is for jazz, and to an extent, that’s true. But this instrument is equally at home in singer-songwriter, R&B, and of course, hip-hop.
In player mode, you can trigger a variety of phrases, while in instrument mode, you can create your own phrases.
MELLOW 2 has a very authentic and configurable sound. To see it in action, check out the video below.
Learn more: Plugin Boutique
KHORDS by Loopmasters Plugins
Presets, chord libraries, sequencers, and other similar tools are all the rage right now. That’s because they help you create sick hooks without knowing all the ins and outs of music theory. And frankly, they’re also great for those times you’re a little low on inspiration but still need to crank out a hit anyway.
Loopmasters Plugins’ KHORDS comes with 550 chord presets, with a huge sound library comprised of stabs, plucks, strums, pads, atmospheres, and other creative sources. You can choose from major, minor, and single notes, or take advantage of the random selector that will keep the tonality of the track you’re creating (major or minor).
You can further tweak the sounds with real-time audio warping (pitch and timing), 12 filter types, amplitude and filter ADSR, LFO, and other great effects.
In total, there are 315 chord and note samples, 550 presets, Major, Minor, and Root / Open feels, timestretch and shift formants, random samples, and chord samples with re-pitch up and down.
Additionally, there are 12 filter types with pre-drive, resonance, and key tracking, filter ADSR envelope and filter LFO with amount, rate, shape, phase, and trigger, six chord algorithms, three delay types, six reverb environments, and four mod wheel destinations.
One of the greatest challenges a producer faces is coming up with compelling melodies, and KHORDS is one of those plugins that can help you find inspiration. The included sounds are a lot of fun, and they can instantly create a mood for your new tracks.
Check out the video below to see how you can incorporate this creative tool into your workflow.
Learn more: Plugin Boutique
Scaler 2 by Plugin Boutique
Not a music theory buff? Hey, we get it. Even some of the top all-time musicians didn’t necessarily know their way around every note, scale, chord progression, or otherwise (though they probably had a good ear and good intuition).
But sometimes, humming melodies and beat boxing will only take you so far.
And so, while it’s not the only plugin of its kind in this guide, Plugin Boutique’s Scaler 2 is worthy of a look. This music theory workstation will suggest chords based on the melodies and scales you’re working with. So, if you find that melody is one of the most challenging aspects of production, you might just be in luck.
Producer Breakage called Scaler 2 a must for anyone who doesn’t understand structures or needs a fast workflow. Singer / songwriter / producer CeCe Rogers said it was “awesome.” And Jonny Sonic thought Scaler 2 was next level.
Scaler 2 comes with an insane number of features, and we can’t possibly cover them all here. But here’s an overview.
First, Scaler 2 can listen to incoming audio or MIDI and detect the key signature. Then it will suggest chords and chord progressions that will fit in your tune. It can send MIDI to a virtual instrument, and it even has 45 onboard instruments.
With over 400 song and genre-based chord sets, 200+ artist chord sets, and hundreds of scales and modes, you’re sure not to run out of options or ideas any time soon.
Not happy with the chords Scaler 2 gives you? Simply explore alternative suggestions, voicings, chord extensions, and variations.
You can also take advantage of edit mode to dial in duration, octave, inversions, and other parameters for each chord. Auditioning new chord progressions is a cinch since DAW Sync links chord patterns to your DAW’s playback. Crazy.
Scaler 2 can even make modulation suggestions (to move your song from one key signature to another), and it has over 500 expressions that let you explore a variety of riffs and melodies, which can easily be locked to notes of your scale or a chord.
Learn more: Plugin Boutique
Sektor by Initial Audio
For the most part, you can’t have too many synths, and Initial Audio’s Sektor just so happens to be affordable and intriguing enough for hip-hop producers to take note.
What is Sektor? It’s a polyphonic wavetable synth with plenty of features and parameters built into it.
The modulation section includes envelopes, ADSRs, and LFOs. There’s also a modulation matrix that puts velocity, aftertouch, and other parameters at your fingertips.
You also get 16 voices per wavetable oscillator with OSC+, Heat Up 2 multisample engine, and two effects racks (featuring a four-band equalizer, compressor, delay, distortion, chorus, phaser, trance gate, and stereo shaper. You can rearrange the order of effects by dragging and dropping.
The user interface was developed around ease of use, and it’s customizable to boot. You can change colors, backgrounds, skins, and more. You can also create custom arps and sequences, add your own samples, create your own presets, expansion packs, and more.
In total, Sektor comes with over 750 factory presets, over 200 wavetables, built-in sampler engine with hundreds of samples, sequencer, and more.
There are plenty of sounds here that would be perfectly at home in video games as well as electronic music. The sequencer can really breathe some life into these sounds as well.
Check out the video below to see it for yourself because you just never know…
Learn more: Plugin Boutique
Movement by Output
Obviously, there are some synths with arpeggiators, sequencers, or other rhythmic pulse generators that can add some serious movement to your sounds. But what if your synths don’t have this functionality? Or what if you can’t use it on your favorite virtual instrument? Or what if you’re looking for more options for your organic guitar and piano tracks?
That’s where Output’s Movement rhythm FX engine comes in.
CDM says it’s scary how much this rhythmic effect can do. Ask.Audio thought it could improve your quality of life as a musician. FACT Magazine said they couldn’t imagine their life without it.
Movement will add exciting rhythmic effects to any input. It doesn’t matter whether it’s guitars, keyboards, synths, pads, drums, or full mixes, whether it’s in the studio or live, Movement can breathe life into your tracks.
Movement comes with 300+ presets, modulation for any parameter with any rhythm in real time, sidechain, LFO, step sequencer rhythm modulation, Flux and Randomizer, advanced sidechain modulation, analog filters, EQ, delay, distortion, compression, reverb, and XY pad.
When you have a riff, you like that needs to be punched up a bit, Movement can come in handy. And it’s almost an instrument unto itself, because of how it can so effortlessly transform ordinary sounds into more compelling ones.
At this price, Movement is a practical no-brainer. It’s sure to give your mixes a lot of sonic interest you might not otherwise be able to achieve.
Learn more: Plugin Boutique
LoFi by DopeSONIX
It doesn’t matter whether you’re looking to follow in the footsteps of the explosive popularity of lo-fi hip-hop or you simply want to incorporate the crackle of vinyl, the hiss of tape, the warmth of analog, or otherwise. You need a plugin that’s going to help you degrade your sounds in pleasing creative ways.
DopeSONIX’ LoFi is a great catch-all solution. And as the developers set to work on this plugin, they were rather surprised to find the lack of gritty sound generators that would take hours to find among hundreds and thousands of presets.
Whether it’s old school hip-hop, chill hop, movie scores, ambient, or electronica, LoFi is going to put a world of classic, vintage, analog hum, warping, and grime in your control tower.
LoFi comes with over 20 instruments mangled, resampled, and processed samples that were sent through an MPC60 MKII, Fostex M80 Reel to Reel, and other outboard gear.
It includes 200 presets, and each quarter (50) are dedicated to different sounds. The first 50 presets are focused on the Akai MPC 60 MKII, the second 50 includes various analog and acoustic sounds from synths, tone generators and more, the third segment of 50 comes with tape affected cinematic strings and textures, leads and pads, and the last 50 are chopped samples, crackly synths, warped vocals, leads, and more, in a vinyl vein.
Overall, LoFi comes with 200 lo-fi, chill hop, ambient, and electronica inspired instruments treated with vintage analog equipment, pitch, pan, glide, and volume controls, classic reverbs, ADSR controls, hi and lo pass filters, mono, poly, and legato modes, soft, natural, and hard velocity modes, and more.
Your melodies, by the way, can be programmed manually, and you can take advantage of a MIDI keyboard too.
If you want to work primarily with lo-fi samples, then this may not be your plugin of choice. But if you want to create your own riffs and hooks, you will love LoFi.
Learn more: Plugin Boutique
Bass Master by Loopmasters Plugins
This one basically speaks for itself. Loopmasters Plugins’ Bass Master is an instrument dedicated to the bottom end of your mix.
Beat loved the production-ready presets, producer MJ Cole says he uses it lots, and London Elektricity thought of it as a “quick dial” sound module.
With two layers, there are 217 waveforms (for nearly 50,000 possible combinations) from a variety of synths, be it hardware classics or modern all-powerful instruments. You also get 350 mix-ready presets, 13 filter types (low-pass, band-pass, and high-pass modules), ladder filters, comb filter, ADSR and LFO, effects (distortion with five algorithms and drive and color controls, stereo chorus with four algorithms and amount and rate controls, and reverb send with bright, mid, and dark algorithms with level and size controls).
There’s also a frequency booster with three bands, direct out control, legato and portamento, glide time, pitch bend range of 12 semitones, and more.
True to form, Bass Master is packed with rude, dirty, beefy bass tones that are perfect for your next hip-hop track. And with this plugin, you can add some extra excitement simply by messing with the parameters.
Learn more: Plugin Boutique
Nepheton by D16 Group
So, you want to make some fat beats. There are several ways to accomplish this, but there is a certain sound that has stayed relevant for over 40 years. In this case, we’re talking about the sound of the 808 drum machine.
And we can’t think of a better developer to handle this. D16 Group’s Nepheton offers a synthesized emulation of the classic 808 drum machine.
Producer Roger Martinez called it “the real deal,” DJ and electronic music producer Freddy Fresh said it was the next best thing to owning classic drum machine hardware, and keyboardist / producer / composer / arranger Eddie Stevens thought it was spot on.
All in, Nepheton comes with 17 synthesized instruments, perfectly scaled knob ranges, enhanced control for module sounds, output reassignment (including Master Out and Trigger Output), disable / off mute and solos for each module, MIDI CC, and multiple control variations (external / note mode, internal sequencer / pattern mode with two sub modes).
Additionally, external mode comes with a user-defined MIDI map, note velocity controls, a sequencer with 96 patterns, 16 extended patterns (12 basic rhythms and four intros / fill ins) with four segments per pattern, shuffle mode, tap mode, built in randomizer, two sync modes (DAW tempo sync, internal clock sync), simple preset manager, and more.
If an authentic 808 drum machine sound is what you’re after, you will love Nepheton. This is not a versatile drum machine by any means, but what it does, it does incredibly well.
Learn more: Plugin Boutique
Trash 2 + Expansions by iZotope
Lo-fi effects are one way to add some grit and dirt to your mixes. The other, more traditional way? Distortion. Distortion plays a key role in most mixes today because there’s just so much it can do – it can make an instrument stand out in a mix, add character to it, or make a sound raunchy and almost unrecognizable.
iZotope’s Trash is one of those plugins that can go from 0 to 11, even transform your tracks depending on the effect type and intensity.
Music Tech Magazine thought of it as a flexible sound design tool. Multiplier called it a must-have bass processing plugin. And The Glitch Mob thought it was a blast to mess around with.
Trash is a multi-band, dual-stage distortion with advanced post-filtering. Whether it’s guitars, basses, drums, synths, pads, vocals, woodwinds, or brass, you can apply the effect and experiment to your heart’s content.
With a dual distortion module and a variety of multi-effects, you can chain two distortion algorithms in each frequency band (up to eight types of distortion), take advantage of 100 impulse responses with the Convolve module, incorporate delay and dynamics modules, and dial in two filters with 20+ filter types.
Trash 2 is more than a mere saturation module. You can give your tracks entirely new feels and characteristics with the click of a button. You can unlock new sonic possibilities with Trash 2, which can give your tracks the edge they need.
Learn more: Plugin Boutique
DOPE 2 by ujam
If you’re looking for a drum machine, there are plenty of options available. ujam’s DOPE 2, though, was designed especially with hip-hop in mind.
DOPE 2 is a creative tool that begs to replace your constant searching for a dope sample. With an array of hits, beats, and grooves from boom bap, hip-hop, and rap, DOPE 2 includes 1,180 phrases, 50 styles, and 10 kits.
This plugin also comes with Vinyl Drive (retro turntable noise and compression), and the latest version comes with MIDI drag and drop, multiple audio outputs, 20 new styles and 460 phrases, as well as a mastering section with sweep, saturate, maximize, multi-band EQ, and ambience.
DOPE 2 is filled to the brim with plenty of great beats, and of course you can create your own patterns and variations too.
Learn more: Plugin Boutique
Decimort 2 by D16 Group
When done right, and used in moderation, bit crushing can greatly enhance the feel of your beats. And because it is ultimately a versatile effect, you can try it on a variety of sources.
D16 Group’s Decimort 2 is a high-quality bit crusher offering the coloration and magic of a vintage sampler.
Zedd says he loves Decimort, Multiplier thought it was “ridiculously good,” and James Sanger was positively excited about this development.
Classic Akai and E-MU samplers have a certain character, and this is what Decimort 2 faithfully recreates, giving you the option of adding this color to your loops, bass lines, or any other input you might be inclined to try.
Of course, not satisfied with being “the highest quality low-quality effect,” D16 Group added two anti-alias filters, adjustable jitter, two quantization methods, and controllable dithering.
Altogether, you get an accurate sampling algorithm (ADC emulation), approximative (pre) filter and image (post) filter, adjustable jitter, quantization with controlled dithering, two quantization methods (mid-raiser, mid-tread), analog-like filters with adjustable resonance and cutoff, tag-based preset browser, two GUI sizes, MIDI-learn, 64bit internal processing, and more.
True to form, Decimort 2 is versatile. Drums can be transformed into retro video game style stabs, and analog synths can be made to sound like digital noise boxes. Whether as a lo-fi effect, or as a creative tool, Decimort 2 is sure to bring something to the table in your hip-hop productions.
Learn more: Plugin Boutique
Vinyl Strip by AudioThing
While most DAWs let you create a custom effects chain for any track using your favorite plugins, there is a time and a place for channel strips as well. Channel strips let you add multiple effects at once, and depending on the effect, add a nice coloration to your tracks besides.
AudioThing’s Vinyl Strip is a modular multi-effect channel strip. And this one just so happens to be able to add vinyl, aging, and retro effects conveniently and easily.
MusicTech called Vinyl Strip approachable and powerful, Computer Music Magazine thought it was interesting and versatile, and Beat Magazine liked its sound and features.
Vinyl Strip comes with distortion, compressor, bit crusher, tilt EQ, vintage reverb, and Vinylizer. You can arrange these effects in any way you want by dragging and dropping. Each effect also has its own configurable parameters.
There are many options when it comes to something like a lo-fi plugin. That said, Vinyl Strip certainly has its own thing going. And whether you need to give a track the characteristics of a vinyl record, or help it stand out in the mix, this is a plugin that can come in handy.
Learn more: Plugin Boutique
HUSTLE 2 by ujam
ujam does it again. HUSTLE 2 is a virtual instrument that puts drums with huge, weighty low end at your fingertips.
Whether it’s trap or dirty south, HUSTLE 2 is sure to pump up the jams with a bone rattling bass and grime-covered grooves.
Overall, HUSTLE 2 is a simple VST plugin. The latest version (version 2) comes equipped with MIDI drag and drop, multiple audio outputs, twice the number of styles, patterns, and drum kits, as well as a mastering section with sweep, saturate, maximize, multi-band EQ, and ambience.
Check out the video below to see what HUSTLE 2 can do for your beats.
HUSTLE 2 works with Windows and Mac and is available at Plugin Boutique.
Learn more: Plugin Boutique
What Should I Look For In Hip Hop VST Plugins?
Well, this depends a lot on the type of hip-hop you want to create. Trap? Lo-fi? Boom-bap? Maybe something a little more original, unusual, or outside the box?
This is certainly going to factor into which plugins you buy, because let’s face it – there are no rules to music. And the innovators are typically those who break the rules.
But if there’s a specific feel and style you want to emulate, it’s much easier to do with the right tools than to try to make it work with odds and ends.
You should also look at your existing plugin library. What’s missing from your collection? What gaps do you need to fill?
If you already have a competent vinyl / lo-fi plugin that you’re happy with, it might not be necessary to invest in another one right now. If you don’t have any high-quality synths, though, that might be a better place to look – just as an example.
Of course, it’s also worth considering things like sound quality, features, and budget. Here’s a brief overview of what to look for in these domains:
- Sound quality. If it’s a virtual instrument or effect, listen closely to it (video demos / reviews) and determine whether it works and sounds good to you. You’re the best judge of what you can work with.
- Features. Features are never a straight comparison, but if you were shopping for a synth, for instance, you’d compare options like oscillators, filters, effects, and so on.
- Budget. We don’t recommend going into debt, so please spend responsibly. Use your budget to filter out options.
Top Hip Hop VST Plugins, Final Thoughts
With the above creative effects, powerful virtual instruments, efficient music theory assistants, and inspiring hip-hop VST plugins, you should be off the to races with fresh sounds and new ideas. The above will take your productions to new levels and keep your clients and / or fans coming back for more.
So, make your selection. You’re equipped with everything you need to make your tracks fire. Happy shopping!
P.S. Remember though, none of what you've learned will matter if you don't know how to get your music out there and earn from it. Want to learn how to do that? Then get our free ‘5 Steps To Profitable Youtube Music Career' ebook emailed directly to you!