title: Hardcore punk

text: Hardcore drumming, with the drummer hitting them aggressively, has been called the "engine" and most essential element of the genre's aggressive sound of "unrelenting anger". Two other key elements for hardcore drummers are playing "tight" with the other musicians, especially the bassist (this does not mean metronomic time; indeed coordinated tempo shifts are used in many important hardcore albums) and the drummer should have listened to a lot of hardcore, so that she or he can understand the "raw emotions" it expresses. Lucky Lehrer, the drummer and co-founder of the Circle Jerks in 1979, was an early developer of hardcore drumming; he has been called the "Godfather of hardcore drumming" and "Flipside" zine calls him the best punk drummer. According to Tobias Hurwitz, '[h]ardcore drumming falls somewhere between the straight-ahead rock styles of old-school punk and the frantic, warp-speed bashing of thrash." Some hardcore punk drummers play fast D beat one moment and then drop tempo into elaborate musical breakdowns in the next. Drummers typically play eighth notes on the cymbals, because at the tempos used in hardcore it would be difficult to play a smaller subdivision of the beat.


title: Hardcore punk

text: The early 1980s hardcore punk scene developed slam dancing (also called moshing), a style of dance in which participants push or slam into each other, and stage diving. Moshing works as a vehicle for expressing anger by "represent[ing] a way of playing at violence or roughness that allowed participants to mark their difference from the banal niceties of middle-class culture." Moshing is in another way a "parody of violence," that nevertheless leaves participants bruised and sometimes bleeding. The term "mosh" came into use in the early 1980s American hardcore scene in Washington, D.C. A performance by Fear on the 1981 Halloween episode of "Saturday Night Live" was cut short when moshers, including John Belushi and members of a few hardcore punk bands, invaded the stage, damaged studio equipment and used profanity.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Many North American hardcore punk fans adopted a "dressed-down" style of T-shirts, jeans or work chinos, combat boots or sneakers, and crewcut-style haircuts. Women in the hardcore scene typically wore army pants, band T-shirts and hooded sweatshirts. The clothing style was a reflection of hardcore ideology, which included dissatisfaction with suburban America and the hypocrisy of American culture. It was essentially deconstruction of American fashion staples—ripped jeans, holey T-shirts, torn stockings for women, and work boots.


title: Hardcore punk

text: The style of the 1980s hardcore scene contrasted with the more provocative fashion styles of late 1970s punk rockers. Siri C. Brockmeier writes that "hardcore kids do not look like punks", since hardcore scene members wore basic clothing and short haircuts, in contrast to the "embellished leather jackets and pants" worn in the punk scene. Lauraine Leblanc, however, claims that the standard hardcore punk clothing and styles included torn jeans, leather jackets, spiked armbands, dog collars, mohawk hairstyles, DIY ornamentation of clothes with studs, painted band names, political statements, and patches. Tiffini A. Travis and Perry Hardy describe the look that was common in the San Francisco hardcore scene as consisting of biker-style leather jackets, chains, studded wristbands, multiple piercings, painted or tattooed statements ("e.g.", an anarchy symbol) and hairstyles ranging from military-style haircuts dyed black or blonde to mohawks and shaved heads.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Circle Jerks frontman Keith Morris wrote: "[Punk] was basically based on English fashion. But we had nothing to do with that. Black Flag and the Circle Jerks were so far from that. We looked like the kid who worked at the gas station or sub. shop." Henry Rollins stated that for him, getting dressed up meant putting on a black shirt and some dark pants; taking an interest in fashion as being a distraction. Jimmy Gestapo from Murphy's Law describes his own transition from dressing in a punk style (spiked hair and a bondage belt) to adopting a hardcore style (shaved head and boots) as being based on needing more functional clothing.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Skateboard culture, streetwear, and workwear are also major influences on clothing worn by participants in both past and present eras of hardcore.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Music writer Barney Hoskyns attributed hardcore being younger, faster and angrier than punk rock, to adolescents who were sick of their life in a "bland Republican" America. Hardcore punk lyrics often express anti-establishment, anti-militarist, anti-authoritarian, anti-violence, and pro-environmentalist sentiments, in addition to other typically left-wing, anarchist, or egalitarian political views. During the 1980s, the subculture often rejected what was perceived to be "yuppie" materialism and interventionist American foreign policy. Numerous hardcore punk bands have taken far left political stances such as anarchism or other varieties of socialism and in the 1980s expressed opposition to political leaders such as then US president Ronald Reagan and British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Reagan's economic policies, sometimes dubbed Reaganomics, and social conservatism were common subjects for criticism by hardcore bands of the time. Jimmy Gestapo of Murphy's Law, however, endorsed Reagan and even went as far to call then former-president Jimmy Carter a "pussy" in a 1986 "New York Magazine" cover story. Shortly after Reagan's death in 2004, the "Maximumrocknroll" radio show aired an episode composed of anti-Reagan songs by early hardcore punk bands.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Certain hardcore punk bands have conveyed messages sometimes deemed "politically incorrect" by placing offensive content in their lyrics and relying on stage antics to shock listeners and people in their audience. Boston band The F.U.'s generated controversy with their 1983 album, ""My America"", whose lyrics contained what appeared to be conservative and patriotic views. Its messages were sometimes taken literally, when they were actually intended as a parody of conservative bands. Another act from Massachusetts, Vile, were known to insult women, minorities and gay people in their lyrics and would even go as far as putting their albums on the windshields of people's cars. On the other hand, Tim Yohannan and the influential punk rock fanzine "Maximumrocknroll" were criticized by some punks for acting as the "politically correct scene police", having what was perceived to be "a very narrow definition of what fits into Punk", apparently being "authoritarian and trying to dominate the scene" with their views.


title: Hardcore punk

text: During the 2001–2009 United States presidency of George W. Bush, it was not uncommon for hardcore bands to express anti-Bush messages. During the 2004 United States presidential election, several hardcore punk artists and bands were involved with the anti-Bush political activist group PunkVoter. A minority of hardcore musicians have expressed right wing views, such as the band Antiseen, whose guitarist Joe Young ran for public office as a North Carolina Libertarian. Former Misfits singer Michale Graves appeared on an episode of "The Daily Show", voicing support for George W. Bush, on behalf of the Conservative Punk website.


title: Hardcore punk

text: While the early hardcore scene was mostly young white males, both onstage and in the audience, there are notable exceptions. Black musicians include Bad Brains, Fred "Freak" Smith of Beefeater, Dead Kennedys drummer D.H. Peligro, and Scream bassist Skeeter Thompson. Numerous Black and Latino members have been in the band Suicidal Tendencies, including Mike Muir, Rocky George, R.J. Herrera, Louiche Mayorga, Robert Trujillo, Thundercat, Dean Pleasants, Ra Díaz, Dave Lombardo, Eric Moore, Tim "Rawbiz" Williams, David Hidalgo Jr., and Ronald Bruner Jr. Other Latinos in early hardcore bands include Black Flag members Ron Reyes, Dez Cadena, Robo, and Anthony Martinez, Agnostic Front singer Roger Miret, his brother Madball singer Freddy Cricien, Adolescents guitarist Steve Soto, and Wasted Youth drummer Joey Castillo. Soto would later form the all-Latino punk band Manic Hispanic, which also featured Efrem Schulz from Death By Stereo. There are also notable women such as Crass singers Joy de Vivre and Eve Libertine, Black Flag bassist Kira Roessler, and Germs bassist Lorna Doom.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Several documentaries, including 2003's "Afro-Punk" and 2016's "Los Punks", chronicle these subcultures within American punk and hardcore.


title: Hardcore punk

text: As of 2019, the genre is still overwhelmingly represented by white males. However, as sonic-diversity has increased in the genre, so too has its fanbase. This has helped bring greater attention to inclusivity within the scene.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Bands like War On Women, Limp Wrist, Gouge Away, and G.L.O.S.S. have helped bring attention to subjects like women's rights, transphobia, rape, mental health, queer rights, and misogyny.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Record labels in hardcore are often DIY endeavors, run by musicians or participants within the community. Largely inspired by early labels like Dischord Records, Alternative Tentacles, Epitaph Records, SST Records, Revelation Records, and Touch & Go Records, record labels are usually run on DIY ethic, collaboration, financial trust, and an emphasis on creative control. Labels within hardcore are seldom large, profit-making operations, but rather collaborative music partners with the intent to document and release music for the underground community.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Ian Mackaye, co-founder of Dischord Records claimed, "We don't use contracts, lawyers, any of those kinds of things. We are partners -- they make the music, and we make the records. From the beginning of this label, people have said that the way we do things is unsustainable, unrealistic, idealistic, and we were just dreaming," he said. "Well, the dream is now 35 years old, so they can go fuck themselves."


title: Hardcore punk

text: Steven Blush states that the Vancouver-based band D.O.A.'s 1981 album, "Hardcore '81" "was where the genre got its name." This album also helped to make people aware of the term "hardcore". Konstantin Butz states that while the origin of the expression "hardcore" "cannot be ascribed to a specific place or time", the term is "usually associated with the further evolution of California's L.A. Punk Rock scene", which included young skateboarders. A September 1981 article by Tim Sommer shows the author applying the term to the "15 or so" punk bands gigging around the city at that time, which he considered a belated development relative to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. Blush said that the term "hardcore" is also a reference to the sense of being "fed up" with the existing punk and new wave music. Blush also states that the term refers to "an extreme: the absolute most Punk." Kelefa Sanneh states that the term "hardcore" referred to an attitude of "turning inwards" towards the scene and "ignoring broader society", all with the goal of achieving a sense of "shared purpose" and being part of a community. Sanneh cites Agnostic Front's band member selection approach as an example of hardcore's emphasis on "scene citizenship"; prospective members of the band were chosen based on being part of the local hardcore scene and being regularly in the moshing pit at shows, rather than based on a musical audition.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Michael Azerrad states that "[by] 1979 the original punk scene [in Southern California] had almost completely died out" and was replaced by punk music boiled down to its essence, but with faster tempos, which became known as "hardcore". Steven Blush states that the first hardcore record to come out of the West coast was "Out of Vogue" by the Santa Ana band Middle Class. The band pioneered a shouted, fast version of punk rock which would shape the hardcore sound that would soon emerge. In terms of impact upon the hardcore scene, Black Flag has been deemed the most influential group. Azerrad calls Black Flag the "godfathers" of hardcore punk and states that even "...more than the flagship band of American hardcore", they were "...required listening for anyone who was interested in underground music." Blush states that Black Flag were to hardcore what the Sex Pistols and Ramones were to punk. Formed in Hermosa Beach, California by guitarist and primary songwriter Greg Ginn, they played their first show in December 1977. Originally called Panic, they changed their name to Black Flag in 1978.


title: Hardcore punk

text: By 1979, Black Flag were joined by another South Bay hardcore band, the Minutemen, who they shared a practice space with until both bands were evicted, as well as the Circle Jerks (which featured Black Flag's original singer, Keith Morris). From Hollywood, two other bands playing hardcore punk, Fear and the Germs, were featured with Black Flag and the Circle Jerks in Penelope Spheeris' 1981 documentary "The Decline of Western Civilization". By the time the film was released, other hardcore bands from Los Angeles County were also making a name for themselves including Bad Religion, Descendents, Red Kross, Rhino 39, Suicidal Tendencies, Wasted Youth, Youth Brigade, and Youth Gone Mad. Neighboring Orange County had the Adolescents, Agent Orange, China White, Social Distortion, Shattered Faith, T.S.O.L., and Uniform Choice, while north of Los Angeles, around Oxnard, California, a hardcore scene known as "nardcore" developed with bands like Agression, Ill Repute, Dr. Know, and Rich Kids on LSD.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Whilst popular traditional punk bands such as the Clash, Ramones, and Sex Pistols were signed to major record labels, the hardcore punk bands were generally not. Black Flag, however, was briefly signed to MCA subsidiary Unicorn Records, but were dropped because an executive considered their music to be "anti-parent". Instead of trying to be courted by the major labels, hardcore bands started their own independent record labels and distributed their records themselves. Ginn started SST Records, which released Black Flag's debut EP "Nervous Breakdown" in 1979. SST went on to release a number of albums by other hardcore artists, and was described by Azerrad as "easily the most influential and popular underground indie of the Eighties." SST was followed by a number of other successful artist-run labels—including BYO Records (started by Shawn and Mark Stern of Youth Brigade), Epitaph Records (started by Brett Gurewitz of Bad Religion), New Alliance Records (started by the Minutemen's D. Boon and Mike Watt), as well as fan-run labels like Frontier Records and Slash Records.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Bands also funded and organized their own tours. Black Flag's tours in 1980 and 1981 brought them in contact with developing hardcore scenes in many parts of North America, and blazed trails that were followed by other touring bands. Concerts in the early Los Angeles hardcore scene increasingly became sites of violent battles between police and concertgoers. Another source of violence in LA was tension created by what one writer calls the invasion of "antagonistic suburban poseurs" into hardcore venues. Violence at hardcore concerts was portrayed in episodes of the popular television shows "CHiPs" and "Quincy, M.E.".


title: Hardcore punk

text: In the pre-Internet era, fanzines, commonly called zines, enabled hardcore scene members to learn about bands, clubs, and record labels. Zines typically included reviews of shows and records, interviews with bands, letters, ads for records and labels, and were DIY products, "proudly amateur, usually handmade. A zine called "We Got Power" described the Los Angeles scene from 1981 to 1984, and it included show reviews and band interviews with groups including D.O.A., the Misfits, Black Flag, Suicidal Tendencies and the Circle Jerks.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Shortly after Black Flag debuted in Los Angeles, Dead Kennedys were formed in San Francisco. While the band's early releases were played in a style closer to traditional punk rock, "In God We Trust, Inc." (1981) marked a shift into hardcore. Similar to Black Flag and Youth Brigade, Dead Kennedys released their albums on their own label, which in DK's case was Alternative Tentacles. The scene was helped in particular by the San Francisco club Mabuhay Gardens, whose promoter, Dirk Dirksen, became known as "The Pope of Punk". Another important local institution was Tim Yohannan's Maximumrocknroll, which started as a radio show in 1977, but branched out into a fanzine in 1982.


title: Hardcore punk

text: While not as large as the scene in Los Angeles, the hardcore scene of the early 1980s included a number of noteworthy bands originating from the San Francisco Bay Area, including Code of Honor, Bl'ast, Crucifix, the Faction, Fang, Flipper, and Whipping Boy. Additionally, during this time, seminal Texas-based bands Dirty Rotten Imbeciles, the Dicks, MDC, Rhythm Pigs, and Verbal Abuse all relocated to San Francisco. Further out of the Bay Area, Sacramento's Tales of Terror were cited by many, including Mark Arm, as a key inspiration for the grunge movement.


title: Hardcore punk

text: The first hardcore punk band to form on the east coast of the United States was Washington, D.C.'s Bad Brains. Initially formed in 1977 as a jazz fusion ensemble called Mind Power, and consisting of all African-American members, their early foray into hardcore featured some of the fastest tempos in rock music. The band released its debut single, "Pay to Cum", in 1980, and were influential in establishing the D.C. hardcore scene. Hardcore historian Steven Blush calls the single the first East coast hardcore record.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Ian MacKaye and Jeff Nelson, influenced by Bad Brains, formed the band Teen Idles in 1979. The group broke up in 1980, and MacKaye and Nelson went on to form Minor Threat, a band which, apart from Bad Brains, has arguably had the biggest influence on the hardcore punk genre, and whose contributions to the music, ethics, aesthetic, and ethos are still widely acknowledged by hardcore bands of the 2020s. The band used faster rhythms and more aggressive, less melodic riffs than was common at the time. Minor Threat popularized the straight edge movement with its song "Straight Edge", which spoke out against alcohol, drugs and promiscuity. MacKaye and Nelson ran their own record label, Dischord Records, which released records by D.C. hardcore bands including: the Faith, Iron Cross, Scream, State of Alert, Government Issue, Void, and DC's Youth Brigade. The "Flex Your Head" compilation was a seminal document of the early 1980s DC hardcore scene. The record label was run out of the Dischord House, a Washington, D.C. punk house. Henry Rollins, who would come to prominence as lead singer of the California-based Black Flag, as well as his own later Rollins Band, grew up in Washington D.C., singing for State of Alert, and was influenced by the music of Bad Brains and the bands of his childhood friend Ian MacKaye.


title: Hardcore punk

text: The tradition of holding all ages shows at small D.I.Y. spaces, has roots in the early Washington, DC straight edge movement. It emerged from the idea that people of all ages should have access to music, regardless of if they're old enough to drink alcohol.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Seminal Boston area hardcore bands included the F.U.'s, the Freeze, Gang Green, Jerry's Kids, Siege, DYS, Negative FX, and SS Decontrol. Members of the latter three bands were influenced by D.C.'s straight edge scene, and were part of "the Boston Crew", a mostly straight edge group of friends known to physically fight people who used alcohol or drugs. Members of the Boston Crew would later go on to form the band Slapshot, and also included future Mighty Mighty Bosstones singer Dicky Barrett, who was then a member of the band Impact Unit, and drew the artwork for the DYS album "Brotherhood".


title: Hardcore punk

text: In 1982, Modern Method Records released "This Is Boston, Not L.A.", a compilation album of the Boston hardcore scene. In addition to Modern Method was Taang! Records, who released material by a number of the aforementioned Boston hardcore bands.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Further outside of Boston were Western Massachusetts bands Deep Wound (which featured future Dinosaur Jr. members J Mascis and Lou Barlow) and the Outpatients, both of whom would come to Boston to play shows. From nearby Manchester, New Hampshire was G.G. Allin, a solo singer who contrary to straight edge used large amounts of drugs and alcohol, eventually dying of a heroin overdose. Allin's stage show included defecating on stage and then throwing his feces at the audience.


title: Hardcore punk

text: The New York City hardcore scene emerged in 1981 when Bad Brains moved to the city from Washington, D.C. Starting in 1981, there was an influx of new hardcore bands in the city including Agnostic Front, Beastie Boys, Cro-Mags,Cause for Alarm, The Mob, Murphy's Law, Reagan Youth, and Warzone. A number of other bands associated with New York hardcore scene came from New Jersey, including Misfits, Adrenalin OD and Hogan's Heroes. Steven Blush calls the Misfits "crucial to the rise of hardcore." New York hardcore had more emphasis on rhythm, in part due to the use of palm-muted guitar chords, an approach called the NY hardcore "chug". The New York scene was known for its tough ethos, its "thuggery", and club shows that were a chaotic "proving ground" or even a "battleground".


title: Hardcore punk

text: In the early 1980s, the New York hardcore scene centered around squats and clubhouses. After these were closed down, the scene was emanating in a small after-hours bar, A7, on the lower east side of Manhattan, and later around the famous bar CBGB. For several years, CBGB held weekly hardcore matinees on Sundays, but they stopped in 1990 when violence led Kristal to ban hardcore shows at the club.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Early radio support in New York's surrounding tri-state area came from Pat Duncan, who had hosted live punk and hardcore bands weekly on WFMU since 1979. Bridgeport, Connecticut's WPKN had a radio show featuring hardcore called Capital Radio, hosted by Brad Morrison, beginning in February 1979 and continuing weekly until late 1983. In New York City, Tim Sommer hosted "Noise The Show" on WNYU.


title: Hardcore punk

text: By 1984, the Ramones, one of the original New York punk bands, were experimenting with hardcore, with two songs, "Wart Hog" and "Endless Vacation" on their album "Too Tough To Die".


title: Hardcore punk

text: Minneapolis hardcore consisted of bands such as Hüsker Dü and the Replacements, while Chicago had Articles of Faith, Big Black and Naked Raygun. The Detroit area was home to Crucifucks, Degenerates, the Meatmen, Negative Approach, Spite and Violent Apathy. From Ohio was Maumee's Necros and Dayton's Toxic Reasons. The zine "Touch and Go" covered this Midwest hardcore scene from 1979 to 1983.


title: Hardcore punk

text: JFA and Meat Puppets were both from Phoenix, Arizona;, 7 Seconds were from Reno, Nevada; and Butthole Surfers, Big Boys, the Dicks, Dirty Rotten Imbeciles (D.R.I.), Really Red, Verbal Abuse and MDC were from Texas. Portland, Oregon hardcore punk bands included Poison Idea and Final Warning, while north of there, Washington state included the Accüsed, Melvins, the Fartz, and 10 Minute Warning (the latter two included future Guns N' Roses member Duff McKagan). Other prominent hardcore bands from this time that came from areas without large scenes include Raleigh, North Carolina's Corrosion of Conformity.


title: Hardcore punk

text: D.O.A. formed in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1978 and were one of the first bands to refer to its style as "hardcore", with the release of their album "Hardcore '81". Other early hardcore bands from British Columbia included Dayglo Abortions who formed in 1979, the Subhumans and the Skulls.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Nomeansno is a hardcore band originally from Victoria, British Columbia and now located in Vancouver. SNFU formed in Edmonton in 1981 and also later relocated to Vancouver. Bunchofuckingoofs, from the Kensington Market neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario, formed in November 1983 as a response to "a local war with glue huffing Nazi skinheads." In Montreal, The Asexuals helped fertilize a scene that became a necessary tour stop for punk and hardcore bands headed to the Northeast.


title: Hardcore punk

text: In the United Kingdom a fertile hardcore scene took root early on. Referred to under a number of names including "U.K. Hardcore", "UK 82", "second wave punk", "real punk", and "No Future punk", it took the previous punk sound and added the incessant, heavy drumbeats and heavily distorted guitar sound of new wave of British heavy metal bands, especially Motörhead. Formed in 1977 in Stoke-on-Trent, Discharge played a large role in influencing other European hardcore bands. AllMusic calls the band's sound a "high-speed noise overload" characterized by "ferocious noise blasts." Their style of hardcore punk was coined as D-beat, a term referring to a distinctive drum beat that a number of 1980s imitators of Discharge are associated with.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Another UK band, the Varukers, were one of the original D-beat bands, Scottish band the Exploited were also influential, with the term "UK 82" (used to refer to UK hardcore in the early 1980s) being taken from one of their songs. They contrasted with early American hardcore bands by placing an emphasis on appearance. Frontman Walter "Wattie" Buchan had a giant red mohawk and the band continued to wear swastikas, an approach influenced by the wearing of this symbol by 1970s punks such as Sid Vicious. Because of this, the Exploited were labeled by others in the scene as "cartoon punks". Other influential UK hardcore bands from this period included GBH, Anti-Establishment, Antisect, Broken Bones, Chaos UK, Conflict, Dogsflesh, English Dogs, and grindcore innovators Napalm Death.


title: Hardcore punk

text: There was an Italian hardcore punk scene in the 1980s, that included groups like Wretched, Raw Power, and Negazione. Sweden developed several influential hardcore bands, including Anti Cimex, Disfear, and Mob 47. Finland produced some influential hardcore bands, including Terveet Kädet, one of the first hardcore groups to emerge in the country. In Eastern Europe notable hardcore bands included Hungary's Galloping Coroners from 1975, Yugoslavia's 1980s-era Niet from Ljubljana, and KBO!


title: Hardcore punk

text: A Japanese hardcore scene arose to protest the social and economic changes sweeping the country in the late 1970s and during the 1980s. The band SS is regarded as the first, forming in 1977. Bands such as the Stalin and GISM soon followed, both forming in 1980. Other notable Japanese hardcore bands include: Balzac, Disclose (a D-beat band), Garlic Boys, Gauze, SOB, and the Star Club.


title: Hardcore punk

text: The mid-1980s were a time of transition for the hardcore scene, with a number of influential bands from earlier in the decade changing their sound or breaking up. For instance, Black Flag's 1984 album "My War", which coincided with the band members growing their hair long, were criticized for having "gone heavy metal". The album's second side was called a road map for sludge metal, as well as being influenced by doom metal bands. Black Flag's eventual breakup in 1986, would coincide with the breakup of one of the other most influential hardcore bands, the Dead Kennedys.


title: Hardcore punk

text: By 1985, Boston bands SS Decontrol and DYS became metal bands, while The F.U.'s did the same, but changed their name to "Straw Dogs". By the end of the year, both SSD and DYS had broken up. Other bands in the mid-80s that went from being strictly hardcore to adding more metal riffs, developed an even heavier sound, with Corrosion of Conformity, Cro-Mags, and D.R.I., becoming known as crossover thrash bands. Bands like Cro-Mags looked to early Bad Brains songs such as "Supertouch/Shitfit" as inspiration for heavy breakdowns in hardcore punk music.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Bad Religion briefly broke up in 1984, after making the progressive rock album "Into the Unknown". They returned to their roots on the 1985 "Back to the Known" EP, and then began their embrace of more melodic straightforward punk rock, starting with 1988's "Suffer". In 1986, Los Angeles's Youth Brigade changed their name to "The Brigade", and changed their sound to a style that The Los Angeles Times compared to mainstream bands like U2, R.E.M., and Big Country. They would breakup the next year.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Bands such as Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Hüsker Dü, and the Replacements, changed their style becoming alternative rock. T.S.O.L., who had already embraced goth rock, became a hard rock band with 1986's "Revenge", being compared to Poison and Faster Pussycat, and going on tour with Guns N' Roses. Red Kross's second album, 1987's "Neurotica", was described as a blend of pop rock and art rock. The Beastie Boys gained fame by playing hip hop, and Bad Brains incorporated more reggae into their music, such as in their 1989 album "Quickness".


title: Hardcore punk

text: Around the same time, a social movement within the influential hardcore punk scene of Washington, D.C. occurred during the summer of 1985, dubbed Revolution Summer. The movement challenged the initial wave of hardcore music, the attitudes of fans and bands before them and also the image mainstream media portrayed of punks. The bands that spawned out of Revolution Summer often took a stand against violence, especially at shows in the form of slamdancing, as well as standing up against the sexism of the scene. Bands associated with the movement, such as Rites of Spring, Embrace, and Dag Nasty, are notable for having inspired the emotional hardcore and the original emo genre of the late 1980s and 1990s. The subsequent Post-Hardcore music genre, spearheaded by bands like Fugazi, is an evolution of hardcore which was created by participants of the Revolution Summer movement.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Starting in 1986, another hardcore subculture known as youth crew took off in the New York tri-state area. It was inspired by bands such as 7 Seconds, Minor Threat and SSD, whose members were all straight edge, and lyrical concerns included brotherhood and community values. The sound was largely defined by a series of releases by labels such as Revelation Records, including albums by Youth of Today, Chain of Strength, Gorilla Biscuits, Bold. and Judge.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Inspired by the experimentation of late '80s hardcore, the beginning of the 1990s saw the emergence of a variety of different styles of hardcore, such as melodic hardcore (Avail, Lifetime, Leatherface, Kid Dynamite), emo (Endpoint), D-beat (Aus Rotten), powerviolence (Charles Bronson, Dropdead, Rorschach), thrashcore (Voorhees), mathcore (Converge), screamo (Heroin, Portraits of Past) and rapcore (Biohazard).


title: Hardcore punk

text: While the 1990s had many different sounds and styles emerging, the genre primarily branched into two directions; "new school" metallic hardcore (also labeled as metalcore), which incorporated aspects of thrash metal and death metal for a heavier and more technical sound, and "old school", reminiscent of the classic beginnings of hardcore punk. "New school" bands such as Earth Crisis, Snapcase, Strife, Hatebreed, 108, Integrity and Damnation A.D. dominated the scene in the early 1990s, but towards the end of the decade, a new-found interest in "old school" and youth crew style hardcore had developed, represented by bands like Battery, Ten Yard Fight, In My Eyes, Good Clean Fun, HO and Better Than a Thousand.


title: Hardcore punk

text: In the late-1990s, there was a number of movements that attempted to rebel against the hyper-masculinity that hardcore had come to embrace. One of these was fashioncore, which originated from Orange County, California metalcore bands, particularly Eighteen Visions. The movement placed emphasis on the fashion style of the musicians, and saw many in hardcore begin to wear skinny jeans, collared shirts and white belts and adopting dyed, straightened and swooping fringed hairstyles. Sass music began with this same intention, doing so by incorporated elements such as homoerotic lyrics, lisped vocals, dance parts and sometimes synths. Groups like American Nightmare, AFI and Poison the Well also rebelled with similar intentions.


title: Hardcore punk

text: In the mid-2000s, a youth-centric hardcore revival took hold, largely fueled by the ease of access to DIY music sharing and organizing amongst teenagers on sites like Myspace.com. Riding the momentum of the late '90s youth crew revival bands like In My Eyes, Bane, Better Than A Thousand, and Ten Yard Fight, a large Youth Crew hardcore scene grew parallel to a rise in the popularity of metalcore, heavy hardcore and the Myspace scene culture of the time. Melodic Hardcore bands like Have Heart, Champion, Guns Up!, Verse, and Sinking Ships emerged, initially representing the youth crew style. In response to the growth of this positive hardcore scene, darker bands like American Nightmare, Ceremony, Ruiner, Modern Life Is War, The Hope Conspiracy, and Killing the Dream formed and were highly influential during this period. The late 2000s saw a large falling out of participants in the scene due to the violent direction it had gone in, accompanied by the disbandment of many influential bands in the genre. However, this era also saw the formation of groove-centric bands like Trapped Under Ice and Cold World, which would go on to inspire experimental hardcore bands like Turnstile and Higher Power in the next decade.


title: Hardcore punk

text: During the late '90s and early 2000s, a more militant subculture of straight edge called hardline emerged. In the late 90s, Elgin James, a musician involved in the militant faction of the Boston straight edge scene, helped found the organization Friends Stand United. By the early 2000s, there were FSU chapters in Philadelphia, Chicago, Arizona, Los Angeles, Seattle, upstate New York and New Jersey, and they were considered to have about 200 members. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, eventually classified FSU as a street gang, which used violent methods and repeatedly assault people at hardcore shows and on Boston streets. In conjunction with the gang activities, James eventually did time in jail for extortion.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Further bands meshed straight edge with additional causes such as Christian hardcore bands Call to Preserve, The Red Baron, xLooking Forwardx, Jewish band Sons of Abraham,


title: Hardcore punk

text: queercore band Limp Wrist, right-wing anti-immigrant band One Life Crew, and anti-capitalism bands Manliftingbanner and Refused.


title: Hardcore punk

text: In the 2000s, Youth Crew saw a second wave of popularity with prominent straight edge Youth Crew bands like Have Heart and Bane, among others.


title: Hardcore punk

text: During this era in mainstream music, punk rock became a success in 1994 with popular bands like Green Day, The Offspring, and Rancid. While typically playing pop punk, Green Day's 1997 album "Nimrod" contained two songs ("Platypus [I Hate You]" and "Take Back") that were described as hardcore, while The Offspring frontman Dexter Holland started Nitro Records, a label which released music from a number of hardcore bands including AFI, A Wilhelm Scream, Crime in Stereo, Ensign, The Letters Organize, No Trigger, and T.S.O.L. Meanwhile, Rancid would record a hardcore album with 2000's "Rancid".


title: Hardcore punk

text: The same year punk became popular again in 1994, Sick of It All released the major label album "Scratch the Surface". According to lead singer Lou Koller, people were thinking they would go from a hardcore band to sounding like Green Day, so they intentionally made an album heavier than anything they'd done before. The album became a surprise success, with the single "Step Down" becoming a staple on MTV, thanks to a tongue-in-cheek music video featuring a roving reporter "exposing" the world of hardcore, and showing how to do various hardcore dance moves.


title: Hardcore punk

text: The '90s also saw a rise in pop-punk bands like New Found Glory and Saves The Day, who garnered attention from fans of hardcore due to band member connections to the contemporary hardcore scene.


title: Hardcore punk

text: With the increased popularity of punk rock in the mid-1990s and the 2000s, additional hardcore bands signed with major record labels. In 2001, New York's HO released the album "Go" on MCA, but it failed at bringing the band big success, and fell flat with longtime fans. In 2002, AFI signed to DreamWorks Records but changed their sound considerably for its successful major label debut "Sing the Sorrow". Chicago's Rise Against were signed by Geffen Records, and three of its releases on the label were certified platinum by the RIAA. Like AFI, Rise Against gradually removed elements of hardcore from their music, culminating with 2008's "Appeal to Reason", which lacked the intensity found in their earlier albums. Notable independent label Bridge 9 Records saw several of their artists rise to prominence, including Defeater, Verse and Have Heart, who had a Billboard chart entry with their second album, 'Songs To Scream At The Sun'. In an AllMusic review, Greg Prato wrote about the label's band Energy that "While you wouldn't go quite as far as calling Energy "a hardcore Boy band," the group's leanings toward the mainstream are undeniable throughout Invasions of the Mind".


title: Hardcore punk

text: United Kingdom band Gallows were signed to Warner Bros. Records for £1 million. Their major label debut "Grey Britain" was described as being even more aggressive than their previous material, and the band was subsequently dropped from the label. The success of the band led to other British hardcore acts of the time gain notability like The Ghost of a Thousand and Heights.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Los Angeles band The Bronx briefly appeared on Island Def Jam Music Group for the release of their 2006 self-titled album, which was named one of the top 40 albums of the year by "Spin" magazine. They appeared in the Darby Crash biopic "What We Do Is Secret", playing members of Black Flag. In 2007, Toronto's Fucked Up appeared on "MTV Live Canada", where they were introduced as "Effed Up". During the performance of its song "Baiting the Public", the majority of the audience was moshing, which caused $2000 in damages to the set. Fucked Up went on to win the 2009 Polaris Music Prize for the album "The Chemistry of Common Life".


title: Hardcore punk

text: Australian hardcore also took off during this time with bands like Miles Away, Break Even, 50 Lions (formed in 2005), and Iron Mind (formed in 2006). The genre was played on the national Triple J network on the short.fast.loud program. Australian labels that released hardcore music include Broken Hive Records, Resist Records and UNFD Records.


title: Hardcore punk

text: With many bands breaking up in the late 2000s, accompanied by a general sense of sonic homogeny in the hardcore genre, the 2010s became a decade of experimentation and fusion in hardcore music that was fueled by access to streaming. Drawing from and collaborating with elements of other eras and genres, hardcore grew as music styles intersected. For instance, bands like Trash Talk began collaborating with artists like Tyler The Creator and his hip hop collective Odd Future. Baltimore hardcore band Turnstile, who formed in 2010, released their sophomore album Time & Space in 2018, which was widely praised for blending sounds of '90s alternative rock with groove-laden hardcore. Meanwhile, bands like Fury, Fiddlehead, and Give garnered a great deal of attention on an underground level for their lyricism and diverse sounds. Other prominent bands, like Title Fight and Basement brought elements of shoegaze and 90's noise rock into the hardcore genre. Bands like Praise, Truth Cult, Anxious, and Mil-Spec were among a handful of hardcore bands in the 2010s to allude to a more emotive, Revolution Summer style of hardcore punk.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Heavy hardcore bands, like melodic hardcore band One Step Closer, Magnitude, and Dare all helped carry the tradition of youth-centric, straightedge hardcore in the 2010s.


title: Hardcore punk

text: During this decade, many hardcore bands also had considerable chart recognition. Turnstile signed to Roadrunner Records in 2017 and released their sophomore album "Time & Space" in 2018, which reached number one on the Billboard Heatseekers chart. Gouge Away, formed in 2012 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, saw their record "Burnt Sugar" peak at 46 on Billboard Independent Albums. Code Orange, who formed in Pittsburgh in 2008, their 2014 sophomore album "I Am King" reached number 96 on the Billboard 200, and its follow up, 2017's Forever peaked and number 62. Kentucky hardcore band Knocked Loose formed in 2013 and released their debut album "Laugh Tracks" in 2016, which peaked at number 163 on the Billboard 200. Its follow up "A Different Shade of Blue" was released in 2019 and peaked at number 26.


title: Hardcore punk

text: In the mid–2010s a number of British hardcore punk bands began being represented as members of a new musical movement dubbed the "New Wave of British Hardcore", a term coined by Adam Malik from The Essence Records. Bands who are part of the movement generally take influence from '80s Boston and New York hardcore bands. Bands associated with the movement include Arms Race, Violent Reaction, Big Cheese, Higher Power, Perspex Flesh, Mob Rules, the Flex and Blind Authority. Some bands such as Rapture, Violent Reaction and Payday are straight edge.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Partly due to developments in digital communications, there was a rise in interaction between hardcore scenes in different places and subgenres, particularly in Europe. In September 2017, Bandcamp Daily wrote that Fluff Fest, which has been held in the Czech Republic since 2000 and features an international lineup of independent bands ranging in style from crust punk to screamo, "has established itself as the main DIY hardcore punk event in Europe".


title: Hardcore punk

text: During this time, Muslim hardcore bands have emerged in the US, Canada, Pakistan, and Indonesia. The development of Muslim hardcore has been traced to the impact of a 2010 film "Taqwacore", a documentary about the Muslim hardcore scene. Bands include the Kominas from Boston, the all-girl Secret Trial Five from Toronto, Al Thawra (The Power) from Chicago "and even a few bands out in Pakistan and Indonesia."


title: Hardcore punk

text: Hardcore in the late-2010s saw a significant growth of the scene, to involve bands taking influence from styles generally disassociated with it, such as industrial, heavy metal, post-punk and nu metal. Around this time, mainstream rappers began to associate themselves with the hardcore scene. Playboi Carti included a performance from a hardcore show as the front cover for his 2018 album Die Lit, Denzel Curry collaborated with Bad Brains and Fucked Up in 2019 and rap groups Suicideboys and City Morgue were joined on tour by hardcore bands Turnstile and Trash Talk. Rappers Wicca Phase Springs Eternal and Ghostemane even began playing music by performing in hardcore bands. In September 2019, rap group Injury Reserve released a collaborative track with Code Orange and JPEGMafia.


title: Hardcore punk

text: In 2019, the highly influential 2000's Boston hardcore band Have Heart reunited for performances in four different locations after a ten-year breakup. One of these performances was outside the Worcester Palladium in Massachusetts, which drew around 10,000 attendees, making it the largest standalone hardcore show in history.


title: Hardcore punk

text: The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has made the prospect of playing live music difficult. This has brought about a heavy digital shift in independent music, where many bands have begun performing live-stream shows for fans until physical shows can occur. With social distancing limiting the availability of physical interactions, the hardcore community has relied on social media activity, podcasting, zines, and video content to stay connected virtually.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Hardcore punk has spawned a number of subgenres, fusion genres and derivative forms. Key derivatives like , emo, and skate punk have had a major impact on alternative music. Other subgenres include D-beat, melodic hardcore, crust punk, and thrashcore. Fusion genres include crossover thrash, grindcore, and metalcore, all of which fuse hardcore punk with extreme metal.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Metallica and Slayer, pioneers of the heavy metal subgenre thrash metal, were influenced by a number of hardcore bands. Metallica's cover album "Garage Inc." included covers of two Discharge and three Misfits songs, while Slayer's cover album "Undisputed Attitude" consisted of covers of predominately hardcore punk bands.


title: Hardcore punk

text: The Washington state band Melvins, aside from their influence on grunge, helped create what would be known as sludge metal, which is also a combination between Black Sabbath-style music and hardcore punk. This genre developed during the early 1990s, in the Southern United States (particularly in the New Orleans metal scene). Some of the pioneering bands of sludge metal were: Eyehategod, Crowbar, Down, Buzzov*en, Acid Bath and Corrosion of Conformity. Later, bands such as Isis and Neurosis, with similar influences, created a style that relies mostly on ambience and atmosphere that would eventually be named atmospheric sludge metal or post-metal.


title: Hardcore punk

text: D-beat (also known as discore or kängpunk) is a hardcore punk subgenre, developed in the early 1980s by imitators of the band Discharge, after whom the genre is named, as well as a drum beat characteristic of this subgenre. The bands Discharge and the Varukers are pioneers of the D-beat genre. Robbie Mackey of "Pitchfork Media" described D-beat as "hardcore drumming set against breakneck riffage and unintelligible howls about anarchy, working-stiffs-as-rats, and banding together to, you know, fight."


title: Hardcore punk

text: The 1980s saw the development of post-hardcore, which took the hardcore style in a more complex and dynamic direction, with a focus on singing rather than screaming. The post-hardcore style first took shape in Chicago, with bands such as Big Black, the Effigies and Naked Raygun. It later developed in Washington, DC within the community of bands on Ian MacKaye's Dischord Records, with bands such as Fugazi, the Nation of Ulysses, and Jawbox. The style extended until the late 2000s. The mid-80s Washington, D.C. Revolution Summer movement and post-hardcore scene would also see the birth of emo. Guy Picciotto formed Rites of Spring in 1984, breaking free of hardcore's self-imposed boundaries in favor of melodic guitars, varied rhythms, and deeply personal, impassioned lyrics dealing with nostalgia, romantic bitterness, and poetic desperation. Other D.C. bands such as Gray Matter, Beefeater, Fire Party, Dag Nasty, also became connected to this movement. The style was dubbed "emo", "emo-core", or "post-harDCore" (in reference to one of the names given to the Washington, D.C. hardcore scene).


title: Hardcore punk

text: Often confused with crossover thrash and sometimes thrash metal, is thrashcore. Thrashcore (also known as fastcore) is a subgenre of hardcore punk that emerged in the early 1980s. It is essentially sped-up hardcore punk, with bands often using blast beats. Just as hardcore punk groups distinguished themselves from their punk rock predecessors by their greater intensity and aggression, thrashcore groups (often identified simply as "thrash") sought to play at breakneck tempos that would radicalize the innovations of hardcore. Early American thrashcore groups included Cryptic Slaughter (Santa Monica), D.R.I. (Houston), Septic Death (Boise) and Siege (Weymouth, Massachusetts). Thrashcore spun off into powerviolence, another raw and dissonant subgenre of hardcore punk. Other notable powerviolence bands include early Ceremony, Man is the Bastard and Spazz.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Grindcore is an extreme genre of music that began the early to mid-1980s. Grindcore music relies on heavy metal instrumentation and eventually changed into a genre similar to death metal. Grindcore vocals, according to AllMusic, range "from high-pitched shrieks to low, throat-shredding growls and barks". Grindcore also features blast beats; according to Adam MacGregor of "Dusted", "the blast-beat generally comprises a repeated, sixteenth-note figure played at a very fast tempo, and divided uniformly among the kick drum, snare and ride, crash, or hi-hat cymbal." The band Napalm Death invented the grindcore genre; their debut album "Scum" was described by AllMusic as "perhaps the most representative example of" grindcore.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Beatdown hardcore (also known as heavy hardcore, brutal hardcore, toughguy, and moshcore) is a style of hardcore punk and heavy metal which has deep, hoarse vocals, down-tuned guitars, blast beats, and slow breakdowns. More heavy metal-influenced than traditional hardcore punk, Rotting Out, Strife, Shai Hulud, Madball and Hatebreed all are beatdown hardcore bands.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Metalcore is a fusion genre that merges hardcore punk with extreme metal. Metalcore has screaming, growling, heavy guitar riffs, breakdowns, and double bass drumming. Heavy metal-hardcore punk hybrids arose in the mid-1980s and would also radicalize the innovations of hardcore as the two genres and their ideologies intertwined noticeably. The term has been used to refer to bands that were not purely hardcore nor purely metal such as Earth Crisis, Integrity and Hogan's Heroes. During the 2000s there was a metalcore explosion and bands like Bullet for My Valentine, Killswitch Engage, Atreyu, Shadows Fall, and As I Lay Dying all had some popularity.


title: Hardcore punk

text: In the mid-1980s, bands such as Melvins, Flipper and Green River developed a sludgy, "aggressive sound that melded the slower tempos of heavy metal with the intensity of hardcore," creating an alternative rock subgenre known as grunge. Grunge evolved from the local Seattle punk rock scene, and it was inspired by bands such as the Fartz, 10 Minute Warning and the Accüsed. Grunge fuses elements of hardcore and heavy metal, although some bands performed with more emphasis on one or the other. Grunge's key guitar influences included Black Flag and the Melvins. Black Flag's 1984 record "My War", on which the band combined heavy metal with their traditional sound, made a strong impact in Seattle.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Nintendocore, another musical style, fuses hardcore with video game music, chiptune, and 8-bit music.


title: Hardcore punk

text: Eyehategod formed in Harvey, Louisiana in 1988 and is credited with originating a new style - New Orleans hardcore-edged sludge. Another point of view is that New Orleans was the birthplace of the sludgecore movement, with Eyehategod being given the most credit for it. Sludgecore combines sludge metal with hardcore punk, and possesses a slow pace, a low guitar tuning, and a grinding dirge-like feel. Bands regarded as sludgecore include Acid Bath, Eyehategod, and Soilent Green, and all three formed in Louisiana. Crowbar formed in 1991 and mixed "detuned, lethargic sludged-out metal with hardcore and southern elements". According to rock journalist Steve Huey writing in AllMusic, Eyehategod was a sludge metal band that became part of the "Southern sludgecore scene". This scene also included Crowbar and Down, with all three bands being influenced by Black Flag, Black Sabbath, and the Melvins. Some of these bands incorporated Southern rock influences.


title: Lil Tjay

text: Tione Jayden Merritt (born April 30, 2001), known professionally as Lil Tjay, is an American rapper and singer. He rose to prominence in 2017 with his song "Resume", and the release of his breakthrough song "Brothers" which led him to sign with Columbia Records later that year.


title: Lil Tjay

text: Lil Tjay's debut studio album, "True 2 Myself", was released in 2019. The following year, he released the mixtape "State of Emergency" that features only drill artists from New York City. "True 2 Myself" debuted at number 5 on the "Billboard" 200, marking the album his first charted release. His second studio album, "Destined 2 Win", was released in 2021 and included the single "Calling My Phone", a collaboration with fellow recording artist 6lack, his highest-charting song yet.


title: Lil Tjay

text: Merritt was born in the Bronx borough of New York City. He was raised by a single mother and had two younger siblings in what was described as a "roomy" apartment. Merritt called himself the problematic child out of the three, as he would often get himself into petty robberies and school fights. At the age of 15, Merritt was arrested for one of his robberies and was sentenced for a year to a youth detention center where he would begin to write raps; they included one of his hit songs "Resume", which he released on SoundCloud.


title: Lil Tjay

text: Merritt's childhood friend, Smelly, was fatally stabbed in August of 2016. Merritt pays tribute to his childhood friend in a number of his songs referencing his name, "Smelly."


title: Lil Tjay

text: In 2016, Merritt began releasing music on SoundCloud. "Resume", one of his first songs, was released when Merritt was 16 years old, and quickly began spreading online.


title: Lil Tjay

text: On March 10, 2018, Merritt competed and placed first at the Coast 2 Coast LIVE NYC All Ages Edition, where his performance gained the attention of a record label A&R who was in attendance to judge the showcase. Soon after, Merritt released the single "Brothers", which became his biggest song at the time and led to him signing with Columbia Records.


title: Lil Tjay

text: Released on YouTube in 2018, Merritt earned himself recognition through his sampling of Justin Bieber's "Baby" on his single, "None of Your Love."


title: Lil Tjay

text: Within the first ten months of Merritt's music career, he had released five tracks that recorded over one million plays on SoundCloud. "Brothers", "Resume", "Goat", and "Leaked" each accumulated tens of millions of streams. In July 2018, Merritt worked with producer CashMoneyAP to release "None of Your Love", which also amassed tens of millions of plays. Merritt released his debut EP "No Comparison" at the end of 2018.


title: Lil Tjay

text: In January 2019, Merritt was featured on fellow rapper Polo G's single "Pop Out", which peaked at number 11 on the "Billboard" Hot 100. In July, he was featured on boy band PrettyMuch's "Lying". Later that year, he released an EP titled "F.N"; the project's lead single, "F.N", peaked at number 56 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 and became his first solo charting song. Merritt released his debut album "True 2 Myself" on October 11, 2019. It debuted and peaked at number 5 on the US "Billboard" 200. In December, he was featured on a remix of 24kGoldn's song "Valentino".


title: Lil Tjay

text: In early 2020, Merritt reached the "Billboard" Hot 100 again with his single "20/20", which peaked at number 94 on the chart. On May 8, 2020, Merritt released the EP "State of Emergency", which focused heavily on drill music, a popular subgenre in New York City. The seven-song EP included the track "Zoo York", featuring Fivio Foreign and Pop Smoke, which peaked at number 65 on the Hot 100. In July, Merritt appeared on Pop Smoke's debut posthumous album, "Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon", on the track "Mood Swings", which reached number 17 on the Hot 100. On August 11, Merritt was included on "XXL"s 2020 Freshman Class. In October, Merritt hinted at a new project on Twitter.


title: Lil Tjay

text: On February 12, 2021, Merritt released his single "Calling My Phone", a collaboration with Atlanta singer 6lack, which was accompanied by a music video directed by Cam Busby. The song debuted at number three on the "Billboard" Hot 100, becoming the highest-charting single of Lil Tjay's career. On March 19, Merritt released "Headshot", a collaboration with Polo G and Fivio Foreign as the second single from his second studio album, "Destined 2 Win", which was released on April 2, 2021. The album consists of twenty-one tracks. On October 22, Merritt released the lead single to his upcoming third studio album "Not In The Mood" with Fivio Foreign and Kay Flock. The single was teased in snippets using TikTok from September prior to its release.


title: Lil Tjay

text: In early March 2022, Merritt began teasing a new song titled "In My Head" which uses a sample of Iyaz’s "Replay". It was eventually released on April 1, 2022.


title: Lil Tjay

text: On April 24, Merritt released a freestyle "Lavish" on his YouTube channel. The following day, he announced his EP "Strictly 4 My Fans".


title: Lil Tjay

text: On August 26, 2022, Merritt released his single "Beat the Odds," which details his near-fatal shooting and an update on his recovery.


title: Lil Tjay

text: On November 17th, 2022, Merritt teased a trailer for his single "Give You What You Want," which was released the same day at 4pm on Youtube.


title: Lil Tjay

text: On June 22, 2022, Merritt was shot seven times during an attempted robbery in Edgewater, New Jersey. He was flown to Hackensack University Medical Center and underwent emergency surgery, while a second victim—22-year-old Antoine Boyd—who is friends with Merritt, was also shot once and was in stable condition. Meanwhile, the shooter was also hit by gunfire, and escaped with help from an unidentified co-conspirator. The Bergen County Prosecutor's Office reported that the shooting did not appear random, and that one victim was upgraded from critical to stable condition, while the other was in good condition.


title: Lil Tjay

text: Later that day, police arrested 27-year-old Mohamed Konate, who was charged with three counts of first-degree attempted murder, three counts of first-degree armed robbery, and multiple weapons offenses. Jeffery Valdez, who was with Merritt but was not injured, and Antoine Boyd were both charged with second-degree unlawful possession of a weapon, but charges were later dropped. Merritt was not charged with any crime.


title: Lil Tjay

text: On June 23, 2022, it was reported that Merritt was still unconscious following the shooting. Days following a lack of any credible updates on Merritt's condition, rumors began to surface claiming that he was paralyzed and possibly brain dead. However, multiple sources later disproved these rumors, as news came out on July 1, 2022, stating that Merritt was still hospitalized but "alert and talking."


title: Lil Tjay

text: On August 24, 2022, Merrit uploaded an update video on his social media accounts. In the video, he states how he's doing better and is "going to come back stronger than ever" while wearing a neck brace.


title: Lil Tjay

text: On August 26, 2022, Merrit released his single "Beat the Odds," which details his near-fatal experience and recovery.


title: Lil Tjay

text: Influenced by his upbringing in the Bronx, Lil Tjay is a melodic rapper who frequently incorporates Auto-Tune in his songs. He has drawn comparisons to fellow New York rapper A Boogie wit da Hoodie. In an interview with "Rolling Stone", he revealed that his biggest musical influences are Drake, Meek Mill, and Usher. In the same interview, Lil Tjay described his music as having a melodic sound when singing or rapping about his past struggles. Lil Tjay also credits his success to his year spent in prison, where he claims that his ability to write songs peaked. In "Pitchfork"'s featured article on Lil Tjay, he is referred to as a "hip-hop heartthrob". Later in the interview, Lil Tjay explained that he is often called the "Bronx Justin Bieber" because of his sampling Justin Bieber's "Baby" on his song, "None of Your Love".


title: Lil Tjay

text: Lil Tjay accompanied Seattle rapper Lil Mosey on his nationwide tour throughout 2019. He also has performed at the three-day Rolling Loud Miami music festival, along with Migos, Travis Scott, and Kid Cudi in Miami Gardens, Florida in May 2019 and at the Los Angeles festival in December. He frequently appears and performs on concerts with close friend Jay Gwuapo.


title: Flash memory

text: Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for the NOR and NAND logic gates. Both use the same cell design, consisting of floating gate MOSFETs. They differ at the circuit level depending on whether the state of the bit line or word lines is pulled high or low: in NAND flash, the relationship between the bit line and the word lines resembles a NAND gate; in NOR flash, it resembles a NOR gate.


title: Flash memory

text: Flash memory, a type of floating-gate memory, was invented at Toshiba in 1980 and is based on EEPROM technology. Toshiba began marketing flash memory in 1987. EPROMs had to be erased completely before they could be rewritten. NAND flash memory, however, may be erased, written, and read in blocks (or pages), which generally are much smaller than the entire device. NOR flash memory allows a single machine word to be written to an erased location or read independently. A flash memory device typically consists of one or more flash memory chips (each holding many flash memory cells), along with a separate flash memory controller chip.


title: Flash memory

text: The NAND type is found mainly in memory cards, USB flash drives, solid-state drives (those produced since 2009), feature phones, smartphones, and similar products, for general storage and transfer of data. NAND or NOR flash memory is also often used to store configuration data in numerous digital products, a task previously made possible by EEPROM or battery-powered static RAM. A key disadvantage of flash memory is that it can endure only a relatively small number of write cycles in a specific block.


title: Flash memory

text: Flash memory is used in computers, PDAs, digital audio players, digital cameras, mobile phones, synthesizers, video games, scientific instrumentation, industrial robotics, and medical electronics. Flash memory has fast read access time, but it is not as fast as static RAM or ROM. In portable devices, it is preferred to use flash memory because of its mechanical shock resistance since mechanical drives are more prone to mechanical damage.


title: Flash memory

text: Because erase cycles are slow, the large block sizes used in flash memory erasing give it a significant speed advantage over non-flash EEPROM when writing large amounts of data. flash memory costs much less than byte-programmable EEPROM and had become the dominant memory type wherever a system required a significant amount of non-volatile solid-state storage. EEPROMs, however, are still used in applications that require only small amounts of storage, as in serial presence detect.


title: Flash memory

text: Flash memory packages can use die stacking with through-silicon vias and several dozen layers of 3D TLC NAND cells (per die) simultaneously to achieve capacities of up to 1 tebibyte per package using 16 stacked dies and an integrated flash controller as a separate die inside the package.


title: Flash memory

text: The origins of flash memory can be traced back to the development of the floating-gate MOSFET (FGMOS), also known as the floating-gate transistor. The original MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor), also known as the MOS transistor, was invented by Egyptian engineer Mohamed M. Atalla and Korean engineer Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in 1959. Kahng went on to develop a variation, the floating-gate MOSFET, with Chinese engineer Simon Min Sze at Bell Labs in 1967. They proposed that it could be used as floating-gate memory cells for storing a form of programmable read-only memory (PROM) that is both non-volatile and re-programmable.


title: Flash memory

text: Early types of floating-gate memory included EPROM (erasable PROM) and EEPROM (electrically erasable PROM) in the 1970s. However, early floating-gate memory required engineers to build a memory cell for each bit of data, which proved to be cumbersome, slow, and expensive, restricting floating-gate memory to niche applications in the 1970s, such as military equipment and the earliest experimental mobile phones.


title: Flash memory

text: Fujio Masuoka, while working for Toshiba, proposed a new type of floating-gate memory that allowed entire sections of memory to be erased quickly and easily, by applying a voltage to a single wire connected to a group of cells. This led to Masuoka's invention of flash memory at Toshiba in 1980. According to Toshiba, the name "flash" was suggested by Masuoka's colleague, Shōji Ariizumi, because the erasure process of the memory contents reminded him of the flash of a camera. Masuoka and colleagues presented the invention of NOR flash in 1984, and then NAND flash at the "IEEE 1987 International Electron Devices Meeting" (IEDM) held in San Francisco.


title: Flash memory

text: Toshiba commercially launched NAND flash memory in 1987. Intel Corporation introduced the first commercial NOR type flash chip in 1988. NOR-based flash has long erase and write times, but provides full address and data buses, allowing random access to any memory location. This makes it a suitable replacement for older read-only memory (ROM) chips, which are used to store program code that rarely needs to be updated, such as a computer's BIOS or the firmware of set-top boxes. Its endurance may be from as little as 100 erase cycles for an on-chip flash memory, to a more typical 10,000 or 100,000 erase cycles, up to 1,000,000 erase cycles. NOR-based flash was the basis of early flash-based removable media; CompactFlash was originally based on it, though later cards moved to less expensive NAND flash.


title: Flash memory

text: NAND flash has reduced erase and write times, and requires less chip area per cell, thus allowing greater storage density and lower cost per bit than NOR flash. However, the I/O interface of NAND flash does not provide a random-access external address bus. Rather, data must be read on a block-wise basis, with typical block sizes of hundreds to thousands of bits. This makes NAND flash unsuitable as a drop-in replacement for program ROM, since most microprocessors and microcontrollers require byte-level random access. In this regard, NAND flash is similar to other secondary data storage devices, such as hard disks and optical media, and is thus highly suitable for use in mass-storage devices, such as memory cards and solid-state drives (SSD). Flash memory cards and SSDs store data using multiple NAND flash memory chips.


title: Flash memory

text: The first NAND-based removable memory card format was SmartMedia, released in 1995. Many others followed, including MultiMediaCard, Secure Digital, Memory Stick, and xD-Picture Card.


title: Flash memory

text: A new generation of memory card formats, including RS-MMC, miniSD and microSD, feature extremely small form factors. For example, the microSD card has an area of just over 1.5 cm, with a thickness of less than 1 mm.


title: Flash memory

text: NAND flash has achieved significant levels of memory density as a result of several major technologies that were commercialized during the late 2000s to early 2010s.


title: Flash memory

text: Multi-level cell (MLC) technology stores more than one bit in each memory cell. NEC demonstrated multi-level cell (MLC) technology in 1998, with an 80Mb flash memory chip storing 2 bits per cell. STMicroelectronics also demonstrated MLC in 2000, with a 64MB NOR flash memory chip. In 2009, Toshiba and SanDisk introduced NAND flash chips with QLC technology storing 4 bits per cell and holding a capacity of 64Gbit. Samsung Electronics introduced triple-level cell (TLC) technology storing 3-bits per cell, and began mass-producing NAND chips with TLC technology in 2010.


title: Flash memory

text: Charge trap flash (CTF) technology replaces the polysilicon floating gate, which is sandwiched between a blocking gate oxide above and a tunneling oxide below it, with an electrically insulating silicon nitride layer; the silicon nitride layer traps electrons. In theory, CTF is less prone to electron leakage, providing improved data retention.


title: Flash memory

text: Because CTF replaces the polysilicon with an electrically insulating nitride, it allows for smaller cells and higher endurance (lower degradation or wear). However, electrons can become trapped and accumulate in the nitride, leading to degradation. Leakage is exacerbated at high temperatures since electrons become more excitated with increasing temperatures. CTF technology however still uses a tunneling oxide and blocking layer which are the weak points of the technology, since they can still be damaged in the usual ways (the tunnel oxide can be degraded due to extremely high electric fields and the blocking layer due to Anode Hot Hole Injection (AHHI).


title: Flash memory

text: Degradation or wear of the oxides is the reason why flash memory has limited endurance, and data retention goes down (the potential for data loss increases) with increasing degradation, since the oxides lose their electrically insulating characteristics as they degrade. The oxides must insulate against electrons to prevent them from leaking which would cause data loss.


title: Flash memory

text: In 1991, NEC researchers including N. Kodama, K. Oyama and Hiroki Shirai described a type of flash memory with a charge trap method. In 1998, Boaz Eitan of Saifun Semiconductors (later acquired by Spansion) patented a flash memory technology named NROM that took advantage of a charge trapping layer to replace the conventional floating gate used in conventional flash memory designs. In 2000, an Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) research team led by Richard M. Fastow, Egyptian engineer Khaled Z. Ahmed and Jordanian engineer Sameer Haddad (who later joined Spansion) demonstrated a charge-trapping mechanism for NOR flash memory cells. CTF was later commercialized by AMD and Fujitsu in 2002. 3D V-NAND (vertical NAND) technology stacks NAND flash memory cells vertically within a chip using 3D charge trap flash (CTP) technology. 3D V-NAND technology was first announced by Toshiba in 2007, and the first device, with 24 layers, was first commercialized by Samsung Electronics in 2013.


title: Flash memory

text: 3D integrated circuit (3D IC) technology stacks integrated circuit (IC) chips vertically into a single 3D IC chip package. Toshiba introduced 3D IC technology to NAND flash memory in April 2007, when they debuted a 16GB eMMC compliant (product number THGAM0G7D8DBAI6, often abbreviated THGAM on consumer websites) embedded NAND flash memory chip, which was manufactured with eight stacked 2GB NAND flash chips. In September 2007, Hynix Semiconductor (now SK Hynix) introduced 24-layer 3D IC technology, with a 16GB flash memory chip that was manufactured with 24 stacked NAND flash chips using a wafer bonding process. Toshiba also used an eight-layer 3D IC for their 32GB THGBM flash chip in 2008. In 2010, Toshiba used a 16-layer 3D IC for their 128GB THGBM2 flash chip, which was manufactured with 16 stacked 8GB chips. In the 2010s, 3D ICs came into widespread commercial use for NAND flash memory in mobile devices.


title: Flash memory

text: As of August 2017, microSD cards with a capacity up to 400 GB (400 billion bytes) are available. The same year, Samsung combined 3D IC chip stacking with its 3D V-NAND and TLC technologies to manufacture its 512GB KLUFG8R1EM flash memory chip with eight stacked 64-layer V-NAND chips. In 2019, Samsung produced a 1024GB flash chip, with eight stacked 96-layer V-NAND chips and with QLC technology.


title: Flash memory

text: Flash memory stores information in an array of memory cells made from floating-gate transistors. In single-level cell (SLC) devices, each cell stores only one bit of information. Multi-level cell (MLC) devices, including triple-level cell (TLC) devices, can store more than one bit per cell.


title: Flash memory

text: The floating gate may be conductive (typically polysilicon in most kinds of flash memory) or non-conductive (as in SONOS flash memory).


title: Flash memory

text: In flash memory, each memory cell resembles a standard metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) except that the transistor has two gates instead of one. The cells can be seen as an electrical switch in which current flows between two terminals (source and drain) and is controlled by a floating gate (FG) and a control gate (CG). The CG is similar to the gate in other MOS transistors, but below this, there is the FG insulated all around by an oxide layer. The FG is interposed between the CG and the MOSFET channel. Because the FG is electrically isolated by its insulating layer, electrons placed on it are trapped. When the FG is charged with electrons, this charge screens the electric field from the CG, thus, increasing the threshold voltage (V) of the cell. This means that the V of the cell can be changed between the "uncharged FG threshold voltage" (V) and the higher "charged FG threshold voltage" (V) by changing the FG charge. In order to read a value from the cell, an intermediate voltage (V) between V and V is applied to the CG. If the channel conducts at V, the FG must be uncharged (if it were charged, there would not be conduction because V is less than V). If the channel does not conduct at the V, it indicates that the FG is charged. The binary value of the cell is sensed by determining whether there is current flowing through the transistor when V is asserted on the CG. In a multi-level cell device, which stores more than one bit per cell, the amount of current flow is sensed (rather than simply its presence or absence), in order to determine more precisely the level of charge on the FG.


title: Flash memory

text: Floating gate MOSFETs are so named because there is an electrically insulating tunnel oxide layer between the floating gate and the silicon, so the gate "floats" above the silicon. The oxide keeps the electrons confined to the floating gate. Degradation or wear (and the limited endurance of floating gate Flash memory) occurs due to the extremely high electric field (10 million volts per centimeter) experienced by the oxide. Such high voltage densities can break atomic bonds over time in the relatively thin oxide, gradually degrading its electrically insulating properties and allowing electrons to be trapped in and pass through freely (leak) from the floating gate into the oxide, increasing the likelihood of data loss since the electrons (the quantity of which is used to represent different charge levels, each assigned to a different combination of bits in MLC Flash) are normally in the floating gate. This is why data retention goes down and the risk of data loss increases with increasing degradation.The silicon oxide in a cell degrades with every erase operation. The degradation increases the amount of negative charge in the cell over time due to trapped electrons in the oxide and negates some of the control gate voltage, this over time also makes erasing the cell slower, so to maintain the performance and reliability of the NAND chip, the cell must be retired from use. Endurance also decreases with the number of bits in a cell. With more bits in a cell, the number of possible states (each represented by a different voltage level) in a cell increases and is more sensitive to the voltages used for programming. Voltages may be adjusted to compensate for degradation of the silicon oxide, and as the number of bits increases, the number of possible states also increases and thus the cell is less tolerant of adjustments to programming voltages, because there is less space between the voltage levels that define each state in a cell.


title: Flash memory

text: The process of moving electrons from the control gate and into the floating gate is called Fowler–Nordheim tunneling, and it fundamentally changes the characteristics of the cell by increasing the MOSFET's threshold voltage. This, in turn, changes the drain-source current that flows through the transistor for a given gate voltage, which is ultimately used to encode a binary value. The Fowler-Nordheim tunneling effect is reversible, so electrons can be added to or removed from the floating gate, processes traditionally known as writing and erasing.


title: Flash memory

text: Despite the need for relatively high programming and erasing voltages, virtually all flash chips today require only a single supply voltage and produce the high voltages that are required using on-chip charge pumps.


title: Flash memory

text: Over half the energy used by a 1.8 V NAND flash chip is lost in the charge pump itself. Since boost converters are inherently more efficient than charge pumps, researchers developing low-power SSDs have proposed returning to the dual Vcc/Vpp supply voltages used on all early flash chips, driving the high Vpp voltage for all flash chips in an SSD with a single shared external boost converter.


title: Flash memory

text: In spacecraft and other high-radiation environments, the on-chip charge pump is the first part of the flash chip to fail, although flash memories will continue to work in read-only mode at much higher radiation levels.


title: Flash memory

text: In NOR flash, each cell has one end connected directly to ground, and the other end connected directly to a bit line. This arrangement is called "NOR flash" because it acts like a NOR gate: when one of the word lines (connected to the cell's CG) is brought high, the corresponding storage transistor acts to pull the output bit line low. NOR flash continues to be the technology of choice for embedded applications requiring a discrete non-volatile memory device. The low read latencies characteristic of NOR devices allow for both direct code execution and data storage in a single memory product.


title: Flash memory

text: A single-level NOR flash cell in its default state is logically equivalent to a binary "1" value, because current will flow through the channel under application of an appropriate voltage to the control gate, so that the bitline voltage is pulled down. A NOR flash cell can be programmed, or set to a binary "0" value, by the following procedure:


title: Flash memory

text: To erase a NOR flash cell (resetting it to the "1" state), a large voltage "of the opposite polarity" is applied between the CG and source terminal, pulling the electrons off the FG through quantum tunneling. Modern NOR flash memory chips are divided into erase segments (often called blocks or sectors). The erase operation can be performed only on a block-wise basis; all the cells in an erase segment must be erased together. Programming of NOR cells, however, generally can be performed one byte or word at a time.


title: Flash memory

text: NAND flash also uses floating-gate transistors, but they are connected in a way that resembles a NAND gate: several transistors are connected in series, and the bit line is pulled low only if all the word lines are pulled high (above the transistors' V). These groups are then connected via some additional transistors to a NOR-style bit line array in the same way that single transistors are linked in NOR flash.


title: Flash memory

text: Compared to NOR flash, replacing single transistors with serial-linked groups adds an extra level of addressing. Whereas NOR flash might address memory by page then word, NAND flash might address it by page, word and bit. Bit-level addressing suits bit-serial applications (such as hard disk emulation), which access only one bit at a time. applications, on the other hand, require every bit in a word to be accessed simultaneously. This requires word-level addressing. In any case, both bit and word addressing modes are possible with either NOR or NAND flash.


title: Flash memory

text: To read data, first the desired group is selected (in the same way that a single transistor is selected from a NOR array). Next, most of the word lines are pulled up above V, while one of them is pulled up to V. The series group will conduct (and pull the bit line low) if the selected bit has not been programmed.


title: Flash memory

text: Despite the additional transistors, the reduction in ground wires and bit lines allows a denser layout and greater storage capacity per chip. (The ground wires and bit lines are actually much wider than the lines in the diagrams.) In addition, NAND flash is typically permitted to contain a certain number of faults (NOR flash, as is used for a BIOS ROM, is expected to be fault-free). Manufacturers try to maximize the amount of usable storage by shrinking the size of the transistors.


title: Flash memory

text: NAND flash uses tunnel injection for writing and tunnel release for erasing. NAND flash memory forms the core of the removable USB storage devices known as USB flash drives, as well as most memory card formats and solid-state drives available today.


title: Flash memory

text: The hierarchical structure of NAND flash starts at a cell level which establishes strings, then pages, blocks, planes and ultimately a die. A string is a series of connected NAND cells in which the source of one cell is connected to the drain of the next one. Depending on the NAND technology, a string typically consists of 32 to 128 NAND cells. Strings are organised into pages which are then organised into blocks in which each string is connected to a separate line called a bitline. All cells with the same position in the string are connected through the control gates by a wordline. A plane contains a certain number of blocks that are connected through the same bitline. A flash die consists of one or more planes, and the peripheral circuitry that is needed to perform all the read, write, and erase operations.


title: Flash memory

text: The architecture of NAND flash means that data can be read and programmed (written) in pages, typically between 4 KiB and 16 KiB in size, but can only be erased at the level of entire blocks consisting of multiple pages. When a block is erased, all the cells are logically set to 1. Data can only be programmed in one pass to a page in a block that was erased. Any cells that have been set to 0 by programming can only be reset to 1 by erasing the entire block. This means that before new data can be programmed into a page that already contains data, the current contents of the page plus the new data must be copied to a new, erased page. If a suitable erased page is available, the data can be written to it immediately. If no erased page is available, a block must be erased before copying the data to a page in that block. The old page is then marked as invalid and is available for erasing and reuse.


title: Flash memory

text: Vertical NAND (V-NAND) or 3D NAND memory stacks memory cells vertically and uses a charge trap flash architecture. The vertical layers allow larger areal bit densities without requiring smaller individual cells. It is also sold under the trademark "BiCS Flash", which is a trademark of Kioxia Corporation (former Toshiba Memory Corporation). 3D NAND was first announced by Toshiba in 2007. V-NAND was first commercially manufactured by Samsung Electronics in 2013.


title: Flash memory

text: V-NAND uses a charge trap flash geometry (which was commercially introduced in 2002 by AMD and Fujitsu) that stores charge on an embedded silicon nitride film. Such a film is more robust against point defects and can be made thicker to hold larger numbers of electrons. V-NAND wraps a planar charge trap cell into a cylindrical form. As of 2020, 3D NAND Flash memories by Micron and Intel instead use floating gates, however, Micron 128 layer and above 3D NAND memories use a conventional charge trap structure, due to the dissolution of the partnership between Micron and Intel. Charge trap 3D NAND Flash is thinner than floating gate 3D NAND. In floating gate 3D NAND, the memory cells are completely separated from one another, whereas in charge trap 3D NAND, vertical groups of memory cells share the same silicon nitride material.


title: Flash memory

text: An individual memory cell is made up of one planar polysilicon layer containing a hole filled by multiple concentric vertical cylinders. The hole's polysilicon surface acts as the gate electrode. The outermost silicon dioxide cylinder acts as the gate dielectric, enclosing a silicon nitride cylinder that stores charge, in turn enclosing a silicon dioxide cylinder as the tunnel dielectric that surrounds a central rod of conducting polysilicon which acts as the conducting channel.


title: Flash memory

text: Memory cells in different vertical layers do not interfere with each other, as the charges cannot move vertically through the silicon nitride storage medium, and the electric fields associated with the gates are closely confined within each layer. The vertical collection is electrically identical to the serial-linked groups in which conventional NAND flash memory is configured.


title: Flash memory

text: Growth of a group of V-NAND cells begins with an alternating stack of conducting (doped) polysilicon layers and insulating silicon dioxide layers.


title: Flash memory

text: The next step is to form a cylindrical hole through these layers. In practice, a 128 Gibit V-NAND chip with 24 layers of memory cells requires about 2.9 billion such holes. Next, the hole's inner surface receives multiple coatings, first silicon dioxide, then silicon nitride, then a second layer of silicon dioxide. Finally, the hole is filled with conducting (doped) polysilicon.


title: Flash memory

text: V-NAND flash architecture allows read and write operations twice as fast as conventional NAND and can last up to 10 times as long, while consuming 50 percent less power. They offer comparable physical bit density using 10-nm lithography but may be able to increase bit density by up to two orders of magnitude, given V-NAND's use of up to several hundred layers. As of 2020, V-NAND chips with 160 layers are under development by Samsung.


title: Flash memory

text: The wafer cost of a 3D NAND is comparable with scaled down (32 nm or less) planar NAND Flash. However, with planar NAND scaling stopping at 16 nm, the cost per bit reduction can continue by 3D NAND starting with 16 layers. However, due to the non-vertical sidewall of the hole etched through the layers; even a slight deviation leads to a minimum bit cost, i.e., minimum equivalent design rule (or maximum density), for a given number of layers; this minimum bit cost layer number decreases for smaller hole diameter.


title: Flash memory

text: One limitation of flash memory is that, it can be erased only a block at a time. This generally sets all bits in the block to 1. Starting with a freshly erased block, any location within that block can be programmed. However, once a bit has been set to 0, only by erasing the entire block can it be changed back to 1. In other words, flash memory (specifically NOR flash) offers random-access read and programming operations but does not offer arbitrary random-access rewrite or erase operations. A location can, however, be rewritten as long as the new value's 0 bits are a superset of the over-written values. For example, a nibble value may be erased to 1111, then written as 1110. Successive writes to that nibble can change it to 1010, then 0010, and finally 0000. Essentially, erasure sets all bits to 1, and programming can only clear bits to 0.


title: Flash memory

text: Some file systems designed for flash devices make use of this rewrite capability, for example Yaffs1, to represent sector metadata.


title: Flash memory

text: Other flash file systems, such as YAFFS2, never make use of this "rewrite" capability—they do a lot of extra work to meet a "write once rule".


title: Flash memory

text: Although data structures in flash memory cannot be updated in completely general ways, this allows members to be "removed" by marking them as invalid. This technique may need to be modified for multi-level cell devices, where one memory cell holds more than one bit.


title: Flash memory

text: Common flash devices such as USB flash drives and memory cards provide only a block-level interface, or flash translation layer (FTL), which writes to a different cell each time to wear-level the device. This prevents incremental writing within a block; however, it does help the device from being prematurely worn out by intensive write patterns.


title: Flash memory

text: Data stored on flash cells is steadily lost due to electron detrapping. The rate of loss increases exponentially as the absolute temperature increases. For example: For a 45 nm NOR Flash, at 1000 hours, the threshold voltage (Vt) loss at 25 deg Celsius is about half that at 90 deg Celsius.


title: Flash memory

text: Another limitation is that flash memory has a finite number of program erase cycles (typically written as P/E cycles). Most commercially available flash products are guaranteed to withstand around 100,000 P/E cycles before the wear begins to deteriorate the integrity of the storage. Micron Technology and Sun Microsystems announced an SLC NAND flash memory chip rated for 1,000,000 P/E cycles on 17 December 2008. Longer P/E cycles of Industrial SSDs speak for their endurance level and make them more reliable for Industrial usage.


title: Flash memory

text: The guaranteed cycle count may apply only to block zero (as is the case with TSOP NAND devices), or to all blocks (as in NOR). This effect is mitigated in some chip firmware or file system drivers by counting the writes and dynamically remapping blocks in order to spread write operations between sectors; this technique is called wear leveling. Another approach is to perform write verification and remapping to spare sectors in case of write failure, a technique called bad block management (BBM). For portable consumer devices, these wear out management techniques typically extend the life of the flash memory beyond the life of the device itself, and some data loss may be acceptable in these applications. For high-reliability data storage, however, it is not advisable to use flash memory that would have to go through a large number of programming cycles. This limitation is meaningless for 'read-only' applications such as thin clients and routers, which are programmed only once or at most a few times during their lifetimes.


title: Flash memory

text: In December 2012, Taiwanese engineers from Macronix revealed their intention to announce at the 2012 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting that they had figured out how to improve NAND flash storage read/write cycles from 10,000 to 100 million cycles using a "self-healing" process that used a flash chip with "onboard heaters that could anneal small groups of memory cells." The built-in thermal annealing was to replace the usual erase cycle with a local high temperature process that not only erased the stored charge, but also repaired the electron-induced stress in the chip, giving write cycles of at least 100 million. The result was to be a chip that could be erased and rewritten over and over, even when it should theoretically break down. As promising as Macronix's breakthrough might have been for the mobile industry, however, there were no plans for a commercial product featuring this capability to be released any time in the near future.


title: Flash memory

text: The method used to read NAND flash memory can cause nearby cells in the same memory block to change over time (become programmed). This is known as read disturb. The threshold number of reads is generally in the hundreds of thousands of reads between intervening erase operations. If reading continually from one cell, that cell will not fail but rather one of the surrounding cells on a subsequent read. To avoid the read disturb problem the flash controller will typically count the total number of reads to a block since the last erase. When the count exceeds a target limit, the affected block is copied over to a new block, erased, then released to the block pool. The original block is as good as new after the erase. If the flash controller does not intervene in time, however, a read disturb error will occur with possible data loss if the errors are too numerous to correct with an error-correcting code.


title: Flash memory

text: Most flash ICs come in ball grid array (BGA) packages, and even the ones that do not are often mounted on a PCB next to other BGA packages. After PCB Assembly, boards with BGA packages are often X-rayed to see if the balls are making proper connections to the proper pad, or if the BGA needs rework. These X-rays can erase programmed bits in a flash chip (convert programmed "0" bits into erased "1" bits). Erased bits ("1" bits) are not affected by X-rays.


title: Flash memory

text: The low-level interface to flash memory chips differs from those of other memory types such as DRAM, ROM, and EEPROM, which support bit-alterability (both zero to one and one to zero) and random access via externally accessible address buses.


title: Flash memory

text: NOR memory has an external address bus for reading and programming. For NOR memory, reading and programming are random-access, and unlocking and erasing are block-wise. For NAND memory, reading and programming are page-wise, and unlocking and erasing are block-wise.


title: Flash memory

text: Reading from NOR flash is similar to reading from random-access memory, provided the address and data bus are mapped correctly. Because of this, most microprocessors can use NOR flash memory as execute in place (XIP) memory, meaning that programs stored in NOR flash can be executed directly from the NOR flash without needing to be copied into RAM first. NOR flash may be programmed in a random-access manner similar to reading. Programming changes bits from a logical one to a zero. Bits that are already zero are left unchanged. Erasure must happen a block at a time, and resets all the bits in the erased block back to one. Typical block sizes are 64, 128, or 256 KiB.


title: Flash memory

text: Bad block management is a relatively new feature in NOR chips. In older NOR devices not supporting bad block management, the software or device driver controlling the memory chip must correct for blocks that wear out, or the device will cease to work reliably.


title: Flash memory

text: The specific commands used to lock, unlock, program, or erase NOR memories differ for each manufacturer. To avoid needing unique driver software for every device made, special Common Flash Memory Interface (CFI) commands allow the device to identify itself and its critical operating parameters.


title: Flash memory

text: Besides its use as random-access ROM, NOR flash can also be used as a storage device, by taking advantage of random-access programming. Some devices offer read-while-write functionality so that code continues to execute even while a program or erase operation is occurring in the background. For sequential data writes, NOR flash chips typically have slow write speeds, compared with NAND flash.


title: Flash memory

text: NAND flash architecture was introduced by Toshiba in 1989. These memories are accessed much like block devices, such as hard disks. Each block consists of a number of pages. The pages are typically 512, 2,048 or 4,096 bytes in size. Associated with each page are a few bytes (typically 1/32 of the data size) that can be used for storage of an error correcting code (ECC) checksum.


title: Flash memory

text: While reading and programming is performed on a page basis, erasure can only be performed on a block basis.


title: Flash memory

text: NAND devices also require bad block management by the device driver software or by a separate controller chip. Some SD cards, for example, include controller circuitry to perform bad block management and wear leveling. When a logical block is accessed by high-level software, it is mapped to a physical block by the device driver or controller. A number of blocks on the flash chip may be set aside for storing mapping tables to deal with bad blocks, or the system may simply check each block at power-up to create a bad block map in RAM. The overall memory capacity gradually shrinks as more blocks are marked as bad.


title: Flash memory

text: NAND relies on ECC to compensate for bits that may spontaneously fail during normal device operation. A typical ECC will correct a one-bit error in each 2048 bits (256 bytes) using 22 bits of ECC, or a one-bit error in each 4096 bits (512 bytes) using 24 bits of ECC. If the ECC cannot correct the error during read, it may still detect the error. When doing erase or program operations, the device can detect blocks that fail to program or erase and mark them bad. The data is then written to a different, good block, and the bad block map is updated.


title: Flash memory

text: Hamming codes are the most commonly used ECC for SLC NAND flash. Reed-Solomon codes and BCH codes (Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem codes) are commonly used ECC for MLC NAND flash. Some MLC NAND flash chips internally generate the appropriate BCH error correction codes.


title: Flash memory

text: Most NAND devices are shipped from the factory with some bad blocks. These are typically marked according to a specified bad block marking strategy. By allowing some bad blocks, manufacturers achieve far higher yields than would be possible if all blocks had to be verified to be good. This significantly reduces NAND flash costs and only slightly decreases the storage capacity of the parts.


title: Flash memory

text: When executing software from NAND memories, virtual memory strategies are often used: memory contents must first be paged or copied into memory-mapped RAM and executed there (leading to the common combination of NAND + RAM). A memory management unit (MMU) in the system is helpful, but this can also be accomplished with overlays. For this reason, some systems will use a combination of NOR and NAND memories, where a smaller NOR memory is used as software ROM and a larger NAND memory is partitioned with a file system for use as a non-volatile data storage area.