The answer is RAP, three letters. No other genre has answered the bare words Music genre as often, and POP, SOUL and ROCK trail behind it. A clue this open fits more than twenty genres at different lengths, though, so treat the square count as the real clue and check the table below before writing anything in.
Three squares, three genres, one shared letter
RAP, POP and EMO all answer this clue at three squares, and they overlap in exactly one place: RAP and POP both end in P. That makes the middle square the decider between those two, A for RAP and O for POP. EMO shares no position with either, so an E in the first square or an M in the middle settles the entry on its own.
SKA is the fourth three-letter genre solvers reach for, but it tends to arrive with a signal attached, such as a mention of Jamaica. Ska originated there in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae, which is why a Jamaican clue can want SKA at three squares or REGGAE at six. DUB, a remix style that grew out of reggae in the late 1960s and early 1970s, is the other three-letter option when the wording leans Jamaican. CALYPSO, the seven-square Caribbean option, originated in Trinidad and Tobago rather than Jamaica.
EMO has a history of its own: it grew out of the Washington, D.C., hardcore punk scene in the mid-1980s, where it was known as emotional hardcore or emocore.
Rap meant talk long before it meant music
The slang verb is about half a century older than the genre. Dictionaries record rap in the sense of talking informally, or chatting in an easy way, by 1929, and the sense was popularized in African American speech in the mid-1960s. The meaning to perform rap music is recorded by 1979, the year the Sugarhill Gang released Rapper’s Delight. The single is credited with introducing rap to a wide audience, and it peaked at number 36 on the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1980, which made it hip hop’s first top 40 hit.
That older history lets setters clue RAP with no music in sight. Knock, chat and blame, as in taking the rap for something, all lead to the same three letters, so a solver who fills RAP from a music clue should expect to meet it again elsewhere in the week.
Symbols and spaces drop out of the grid
Several genres carry an ampersand, a hyphen or a space that a grid cannot hold, and the conventions are consistent. The ampersand in R&B is spelled out, so the entry reads RANDB across five squares. The hyphen disappears from hip-hop, leaving HIPHOP at six. Spaces vanish as well, which produces NEWAGE, ROCKANDROLL and THRASHMETAL, all of which have appeared as answers to this clue. They look like typos in a finished grid, but they are standard, and several of the longest answers on the list are built exactly this way.
Every genre length from three to thirteen
| Letters | Answers | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | RAP, POP, EMO | RAP and POP share the final P |
| 4 | ROCK, SOUL, FOLK, JAZZ | SOUL and ROCK are the most frequent |
| 5 | METAL, BLUES, SWING, URBAN, RANDB | RANDB is R&B spelled out |
| 6 | HIPHOP, REGGAE, GOSPEL, GARAGE, NEWAGE | HIPHOP and NEWAGE lose a hyphen and a space |
| 7 | CALYPSO | Caribbean |
| 9 | CLASSICAL | The only nine-letter option |
| 11 | ROCKANDROLL, THRASHMETAL, ELECTRONICA | Two of the three drop spaces |
| 13 | ELECTRONICPOP | Space dropped |
When the clue names a decade or a band
Add a qualifier and the field usually shrinks to one. A clue that mentions the seventies wants DISCO. One that names BTS wants KPOP, with the hyphen gone again. A blank followed by wop, the doo-wop clue, wants DOO. Qualifiers like these do more work than any amount of music knowledge, because they turn a list of more than twenty candidates into a single entry you can write in with confidence.
The bare clue is the hard version. With no qualifier, go by length: pencil in the most frequent fill for your slot, RAP at three or SOUL or ROCK at four, and be ready to erase it when the first crossing disagrees.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most common answer to music genre?
RAP, three letters, has appeared under this exact wording more often than any other genre, followed by POP, SOUL and ROCK. Because so many genres share three and four squares, get at least one crossing before you trust the entry.
How is R&B written in a crossword?
As RANDB. Grids cannot hold symbols, so the ampersand is spelled out as AND and the letters run together. The same rule removes the hyphen from hip-hop, giving HIPHOP, and the spaces from new age and rock and roll.
What three-letter music genres fit a crossword?
RAP, POP and EMO answer this clue at three squares, and SKA turns up when the clue mentions Jamaica. RAP and POP both end in P, so the middle square decides between them, while an E at the start means EMO.
