What was lo-fi?

Abstract:: Recent use of the term “lo-fi” to denote a relaxing form of hip hop departs notably from its earlier use to refer to the poor-quality sound associated with music recorded at home on tape. This article reviews what lo-fi was, first by historicizing the category of “lo-fi” and its associations with poor sound, home-recording, and amateurism, noting that the relationship between these things was not necessary or consistent at the time, and then by theorizing an appreciation of imperfect recordings, which I liken to listening over a noisy channel of communication and which can sometimes suggest dramatic, socially resonant antagonisms.

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Copyright holder:: Adam Harper
Rights statement:: © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent

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