I wrote this original article back in 2017, where I complied a list of the top hip hop forums. Over time sadly some of the sites had met their fate. But that's the nature of the game with online websites and forums. In with the new out with the old.
It's up to the forum owners to find new ways to engage their audience with new technology, like apps, new website design's, gamification , rewards and moderation.
If a site can't give its users these simple tools to create a thriving community, then it's no wonder they fell short over time.
But all is not lost........
I recommend the following list of hip hop forms sites and apps to be the very best of the best. Being a contributing member to most of them, I hope that this list of rap forums will help your journey in becoming a successful hip hop artist.
This list of hip hop forums has been updated as of December 2021. Any new sites I find that are worth your time I will continue to add. Don't forget to download my PDF of this list so you can remember to join some these sites later.
My rap forums list is here to guide you so that you can find active rap forums. To showcase your music on, share rap lyrics and battle rap other hip hop artists.
I also created a pretty awesome blog post here on how to sell your music using beat players here.
How To Promote Your Rap Music On Rap Forums
Rapchat App
Rapchat is one of the top online rap forums online for up and coming hip hop artists.
But it come's with a twist this isn't your typical run of the mill forum website with different sections chat with other artist's. It's an app.
You need to download the app [for free] on to your phone. Connecting with other fans and other rap artists is a great way to promote your music.
The Rapchat app gives you tools, like high-quality hip hop beats, recording tools and a platform to showcase your raps with other aspiring hip hop artists.
You also have the ability to comment, connect and private message other artists to collaborate with.
The recording tool on Rapchat gives you the ability to control the audio of the beat and gives the artist the control to create adlib's over their recordings.
Rapchat is more than just a hip hop forum.
It's almost like an online studio or workshop where you can test new material or gain feedback on your progression as a hip hop artist.
Rapchat has over 1.5 million users from over 200+ countries. It's highly active and integrates perfectly with social media sites like that of Twitter and Facebook and Soundcloud.
If you are looking for a rap forum with a purpose, Rapchat is the first place you should start. Try and collaborate with other rap artists here so you both can grow your fan mailing lists together. If you are look for a tutorial on how to build a fan mailing list click here.
Rappad
Rappad is community hip hop forum, where up and coming hip hop artists, producers and singers can collaborate and share idea's.
This rap offer's more than just a social connection point for hip hop artist. Rappad gives's you essential tools to enable rap artists to cultivate better rap lyric's, and to edit a redefine their current lyric's.
By offering hip hop artists a collection of built-in tools rhyming dictionary, syllable counter, thesaurus and their line generator.
One of the coolest features that Rappad offer is where hip hop artist can upload their own songs to rap pad and it will transcribe the audio for you to access and edit lyrics line by line.
You can sharpen your rap skills by competing with other hip hop artist in their battle rap area. Battle rapping and freestyle battles can give you more purpose to create, you can learn from your wins and loss and find other rappers to collaborate.
Battle rapping is a great way over coming rap writer's block along with adding more accountability into the completion of your songs and lyric's.
The Freestyle Generator will supply you with beats, and song concepts to get your mind warmed up for the creation process.
Never lose any of your lyric's by saving your progress within your Rappad account.
With a highly active forum, Rappad is an essential tool and resource for any up and coming hip hop artist.
This is a pretty cool rap forum. With over 27,000 members and over 1000 daily active user this site is great for good feedback and promote. Rap-Royalty adopts the same 2 feedback link system as the two rap forums above keeping its user contributing to the site.
This is essential to the upkeep of the forum so that hip hop artists don't spam the forum. The 2 link feedback system keeps people contributing.
The forum is heavily moderated by long-term veterans of the hip hop site which keeps it spam free and a thriving and activate hip hop community.
While the user interface is a bit dated with the old V bulletin format, there are really good people in this forum to collaborate and gain good feedback from.
It is a great hip hop forum for new rap artist's to showcase their current work, ask for advice or learn from other active users.
The chat box on the home pages allow people who are currently active to talk about their own music and current events. The battles with both audio and text battles seem to be very active here and are worth having a go.
This is one of the best hip hop forums it has a very active text and rap battle forum. This will be a great place for you to see if your lyrics can stand up against the great rappers here. A good place to test your skills.
The audio drop area is where both producers and rappers share their work and gain feedback. It's one of the best sites to get advice and learn from your mistakes by getting quality words of wisdom from your competition.
The Letsbeef rap forum was created by one of the founding developers {Known as X} of the hip hop beat website Rocbattle. It has some of the visible principals as Rocbattle but with its main function to help promote and prosper it rap artist members.
Letsbeef is a rap forum with a nice sleek design nice green and blue color make it bright and with being active here.
The battle system adopts with the same ways as Rocbattle with nice easy to use uploading and battle software making it quick and effective to get tracks to battle.
This hip hop forum also allows users to use free rap beats and instrumentals from producers from Rocbattle which give you quality beats to choose to rap too and participate in battles.
Text battle is very active and great for feedback and way to work on your lyrics.
Even though this site is free to use Lets beef offers a exclusive membership for $4.99 a month which offer a whole host of features such as chances to be involved in competitions for cash which are monthly.
Other features include "Featured Emcee", video battles, more audio battle time , build your crews and places into tournaments.
The forum its self is very active not as good in my opinion as for the other forums but people still come here and drop their feedback and advice you need on your mixtapes and tracks.
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In this article, I am going to be talking about email marketing for musicians. This is my guide to show how to
Most musicians, hip-hop bloggers, rappers, and artists focus on one platform to connect with their fans and build a following to promote
Reddit
r/HipHopHeads & /r/freestylerap/.
Reddit is one of the biggest online chat forums. You can get very specific with each hip hop niche on Reddit. These specific niches in hip hop or any subject on the Reditt rap forum are called subreddits. One of the biggest on Reddit is that of the r/HipHopHeads or the /r/freestylerap/.
The best thing about Reddit is that it's very well monitored and maintained. Unlike some forums that over time which become lazy with moderation, Reddit has a very strong system to combat spam.
As long as you play by the rules set by Reddit and you have some forum of quality with your rap and lyrics, you can join this forum and gain feedback, learn tips from other Reddit users and post your songs.
In order to make the most out of your experience with Reddit, it's best to contribute to the cause, by sharing feedback with others, asking questions give advice to other up and coming hip hop artist.
Reddit thrives because of the inclusion of a large community of like-minded hip hop fans and rap artist's in each subreddit. If you abuse the system or don't contribute to the greater good then it's very easy to get banned.
Steemit, a new social media platform where everyone gets paid to post online, has been released in beta.
Steemit is a fast growing forum with a similar concept to that of Reddit. Where content creators or content curators can share content in specific niches to specific audiences. It adopts the similar up voting system that drives Reddit with the one added bonus which rewards users in cryptocurrency called Steamdoller's.
Steem it is powered by blockchain technology and it rewards content users and content creators for taking part in this new wave of Social networking...
Unlike traditional social media sites where content is controlled by algorithms to match advertising growth, Steemit is powered by its users and contributors.
A good strategy you should try is my how to promote your music using your back story.
While the music section is small compared to the other Steem groups since I have joined in 2017 it has experience hypergrowth with new music users. Most of which have become tired with Youtube Facebook and Twitter.
All users have the addition of tools like Dlive & Dtube which is Steemit's version of Youtube & Youtube live, Dsound which is Steemit's version of Soundcloud.
While the jury is still out on Steemit on the viability of the project or the legitimacy with it's connection to cryptocurrencies, the community is highly positive and active. It's definitely something to take part in for the future.
Twitter Really Dan? Your streaching here.....
ahhhh just hear me out.....
Twitter might seem like a cop-out for the last top hip hop forum that I can recommend, but Twitter is the best conversational social media site online.
While most rap forum or groups that live on Facebook are badly moderated and have become just content dumps of "Please Check Out My Music" and any decent rap forum on Facebook someone is just trying to sell you their rap beats.
Twitter is an open forum for anyone to join and take part in the discussion and ask for feedback about their rap, freestyles and lyrics. Like that of the rules I mentioned above with Reddit, Twitter is also community driven so you need to share feedback with others.
Some of the best ways to take advantage of Twitter as a rap forum is to jump into current hip hop conversations. Especially with regarding the sites that I have mentioned above. Like that of Rapchat and Rappad or Rapgenius.
You can find these conversations by simply searching the hashtags of these popular rap sites. Eg #Rapchat and #Rappad or #Rapgenius.
Don't just bombard people to like or retweet your music. Instead go out there and drop your feedback on their work. In turn, as them to drop feedback on your freestyle raps, rap lyrics or to critique your work.
If you adopt these simple principles in your networking on Twitter you might find that this can be one the best rap forums online.
Just to wrap it up I created an additional monster blog post about music marketing right here. Go check it out if your stuck promoting your music.
