Create an amazing hiphop setup for under £500. Yes, really!

You don’t need a million dollar studio to tangle with the big boys. Here’s our penny-saving guide to becoming a grandmaster

Built on rhythm, rhymes and a considerable amount of swagger, hip-hop productions’ tools are some of the most sought after in the world of music production. While in our efforts to minimise your expenditure, we’ve chosen some cost-effective kit to get you started on your quest to become the next Jay Z, when it comes to the full-fat impact of solid hip-hop, you’re really needing space, size and – we’re sorry to say – eventually, investment in high end speakers so you can scrutinise every nuance of your mixes, to guarantee that your tracks have maximum impact.

For now, we’ve chosen some particularly bass-frequency-leaning headphones that we’ve used for years, and can guarantee their accuracy and their hardiness over many long nights of use. When it comes to the bedrock of your hip-hop production, few DAWs radiate as brightly as Image Line’s FL Studio. With the ability to loop and sequence your beats, synths, samples and vocals swiftly, the DAW has been cherished by the A-list of the genre’s major players. While we’d normally suggest a budget route, we’d even go as far as to plump for a more complete version.

Getting a decent microphone/interface setup is another biggie; after all, what good is hip-hop without sharp, clear vocals? Our microphone and interface choices reflect these priorities. Beat-making is an art form that is crucial to the genre, and while FL Studio itself contains a salvo of tools that can help in this regard, and Akai’s free MPC Beats should certainly be picked up, we’re recommending a very fun, very genrealigned beat machine

As always, we’ve also taken the liberty of directing you towards one of the CM Plugin Suite’s most hip-hop-flavoured tools; a remarkable sampler that’ll have you slicing, dicing and stitching quickly, particularly when used in conjunction with FL Studio. So, without further ado, here’s our overview of this costeffective hip-hop hub.