Jungle/Drum 'n' Bass

Jungle, with its seething polyrhythms and treacherous breakbeats, was born of hardcore in early 1990s as the U.K.'s response to the States' old-school hip-hop. Jungle tells a working-class urban youth's angry tales of social disintegration and instability, reflecting the fear and desperation of the times. A digitized offshoot of reggae, Jungle's language is comprised of muffled melodies and fractured loops. Reared by British B-boys like Goldie, Aphrodite and 4 Hero, who subsisted on electro, body-popping and graffiti, jungle spawned a number of subgenres, including the dark, anxiety-producing sounds of tech-step.