5 Essential Plugins for a Hip-Hop Music Producer in 2021

Owning plugins to integrate into your DAW is pretty much a given for the modern-day hip-hop/rap music producer. But if you are just starting out, it can be difficult to know what are the best ones to choose from an oversaturated market! 

Perhaps you’re a more experienced, music producing veteran and looking to level-up your sound? Well, veteran or not, this article can help.

Here’s a run down of Sync Rink’s 5 essential plugins for a hip-hop music producer in 2021 (starting with a recommendation for novice music producers):

1. Captain Plugins – Music-making made easy

In at No. 1 is the Captain suite of plugins by Mixed In Key. If you are nascent in you hip-hop, beat-making journey and you struggle with coming with ideas, Captain Plugins are for you! There are 5 plugins that all work together – they are:

• Captain Chords – this plugin helps you to experiment with chord progressions you may not otherwise have thought of! Just set the key/scale you’d like to write your song in, then you will be presented with a panel of buttons with chords for you to pick and lay on a piano-roll, built into the plugin. You’re able to loop the phrase you are working on, change the rhythm and more. If you’re feeling especially lazy or uninspired, there are plenty of preset chord progressions, rhythms and sounds to choose from! The rest of the Captain Plugins suite follows the same format but applies to different aspects of your tune.

• Captain Beat –  a plugin for drum programming: manipulate MIDI or audio samples and seamlessly create a rhythmic foundation for your track.

• Captain Play – a plugin to enable you to play in melodies manually, including shortcuts to play multiple notes with one key press. Compatible with a QWERTY or MIDI keyboard.

• Captain Melody – a plugin that talks to Captain Chords to instantly produce the perfect melody for your chord progression.

• Captain Deep – a plugin that also communicates with Captain Chords to create catchy baselines. Some of the sounds found in Captain Deep are ace!

Find out more about Captain Plugins here: https://mixedinkey.com/captain-plugins/. Retails at $99.

2. Tonal Balance Bundle – The complete mixing & mastering package

If you either don’t know much about how to mix or master, or would like fast results when mixing and mastering, the Tonal Balance Bundle by iZotope is just what you need. This is another suite of plugins that may not give you the finished product you’re looking for in a mix, but it can certainly speed up the process of achieving a polished, final track. The bundle comprises the following plugins:

• Neuton 3 Advanced – Throw this plugin onto your tracks, click a few buttons via Neutron 3’s “Mix Assistant”, which uses machine learning technology to analyse your track by instrument, to level and equalise it in seconds. As mentioned earlier, it’s not always perfect, but it is often a great starting point when starting your mix. 

• Nectar 3 Plus – this plugin is designed exclusively for vocal mixing. Just like Neutron 3 Advanced, there is a “Vocal Assistant” option to fast-track your journey to achieving crisp vocals. The plugin includes pitch correction, effects and unmasking facilities too. What’s more, iZotope have thrown in Melodyne 5 Essential by Celemony, which is the industry-standard plugin for tuning and pitch correction!

• Ozone 9 Advanced – Out of the 4 plugins listed as part of this bundle, the more experienced of you producers have likely come across Ozone. It is often cited as one of the best plugins out there to achieve a quick and dirty master, while still producing a good result! We’re sure that iZotope knows this and that’s why it’s standalone cost will set you back a hefty $499…a pretty penny indeed.(Note: the Tonal Balance Bundle is actually cheaper than the standalone cost of this plugin!) Just like the previous two plugins in the bundle, there is a “Master Assistant” button, where you can choose “Modern” or “Vintage” modules for your master, EQ and loudness settings that are controlled either manually, or against an uploaded reference track. Finally, you can choose whether it is destined for streaming or CD. All there is to do next is to play the loudest part of your track and Ozone does the rest!

• Tonal Balance Control 2 – So you’ve just finished mixing and mastering – what now? How do you know if you’ve done a good job? That’s where Tonal Balance Control comes in – put simply, it checks the “tonal health” of your track by analysing it against one of 12-13 profiles of your choosing. So, as a hip-hop producer, it is likely the profile you’d pick is the “bass heavy” profile. If your song mostly stays within the limits that the plugin defines during playback – you’ve done a good job!

Find out more about the Tonal Balance Bundle here: https://www.izotope.com/en/products/tonal-balance-bundle.html. Retails at $448.

3. XO – Organise your beat-making workflow

If you’ve been producing for a few years already, you may find that you’ve accumulated a heck-load of samples and one-shots. The veteran producers among you would know all about this…you have so many sounds that you end up spending about 3 hours searching for that one snare that will make all the difference to the vibe you are looking for. Well, that’s where XO by XLN Audio comes in really handy!

In a nutshell, XO scans your entire library of sounds for percussive one-shots and groups them together. It then displays these groups in a colourful, visual map that looks like something out of the space-age (watch the demo below and you see what I mean). And… that’s about all there is to it! Basically, it dramatically speeds up the process to find the perfect percussive sound – a simple idea, executed beautifully. Trust a company that’s owned by one of the greatest music producers, Max Martin, to come up with this!

Find out more about XO here: https://www.xlnaudio.com/products/xo. Retails at €179.95.

4. Omnisphere 2 – Best synth for trap beats

If you’re not a beginner music producer, we’d be quite surprised if you haven’t come across Omnisphere by Spectrasonics before. It is widely regarded as the go-to VST plugin for producers in many genres, including hip-hop and writing trap melodies. It’s an absolute behemoth, with over 14,000 sounds to choose from! It doesn’t stop there – Omnisphere 2 has an abundance of features – too many, and some, too complex to list here (the video below demonstrates a few). All we can say is:  go check it out! It’s a bit pricey, but if you’re serious about music production, it’s a staple tool to have in your arsenal.

Find out more about Omnisphere 2 here: https://www.spectrasonics.net/products/omnisphere/index.php. Retails at $499.

5. Arcade – Obliterating writers block, forever

We’re debatably saving the best until last… Arcade by Output has, in our opinion, solved the problem of writers block, expertly. It is essentially a library of samples grouped together into “kits”. These kits are grouped into packs called “product lines”. Each kit has 2, white-note-only octaves of keyboard-playable samples. The black-notes on the keyboard warp the sound of the key or keys being pressed to produce something new and interesting. You can even upload your own samples just to use the warping tools. They have further effects and editing tools too if you fancy “getting under the hood” a bit more of each sample. Oh, and the best part of it all? New kits are released EVERY SINGLE DAY. So you can never run out of inspiration! Incredible. Like No. 4 on our list, you probably want to be serious about your craft as you’ll need to pay a modest monthly subscription to use the product. They do have a 30-day trial though and you can cancel at any time.

Find out more about Arcade here: https://output.com/products/arcade. Retails at $10/month.