Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in South London, England, that generally features syncopated drum and percussion patterns with bass lines that contain prominent sub bass frequencies. The tempo is usually around 140 BPM and the snare will hit down on the third beat, this makes dubstep easily mixed with 70 or 140 BPM tunes.

Dubstep emerged in the early 2000s as a development within a lineage of related styles such as 2-step garage, broken beat, drum and bass, jungle, dub and reggae. It evolved in parallel to grime, which has often been interlinked with it, but is distinct and has its own tag. It is a common misconception that the term dubstep was coined in 2002 by Ammunition Promotions in a press release sent to XLR8R magazine. In reality, the term was first uttered by DJ Hatcha.

The origins of the genre can be traced back to the growth of the Jamaican sound system party scene in London and it’s cultural influence since the early 1980s. Post-dubstep, many of the key artists took their production techniques into earlier styles such as house, techno and UK Garage. Some of this material is hard to accurately describe and is sometimes referred to by the umbrella term Bass Music, which has its own tag, but this should be used sparingly, where no more precise tag exists.

Dubstep started to enter mainstream British popular culture when it spread beyond small local scenes in late 2005 and early 2006; many websites devoted to the genre appeared on the Internet and aided the growth of the scene, such as dubstepforum, the download site Barefiles and blogs such as gutterbreakz. Simultaneously, the genre was receiving extensive coverage in music magazines such as The Wire and online publications such as Pitchfork. Interest in dubstep grew significantly after BBC Radio 1 DJ Mary Anne Hobbs started championing the genre, beginning with a show devoted to it (entitled “Dubstep Warz”) in January 2006.

Towards the end of the 2000s and into the early 2010s, the genre started to become more commercially successful in the UK, with more singles and remixes entering the music charts. Music journalists and critics also noticed a dubstep influence in several pop artists’ work. Around this time, producers also began to fuse elements of the original dubstep sound with other influences, creating fusion genres including future garage and the slower and more experimental post-dubstep. The harsher electro-house and heavy metal-influenced variant brostep, led by American producers such as Skrillex, greatly contributed to dubstep’s popularity in the United States.