The acid bassline. The amen break. The 909 ride cymbal. Even those with a casual interest in dance music can recognize the sounds and samples that have impacted decades of music history. Mainstream EDM even has a few, like its trademark Pryda Snare. While these sounds have stood the test of time, several haven't fared as well, having brief moments of wild success only to fade into relative obscurity. But if you've been paying attention to the resurgence of hard dance music in the last few years—and the experimental sides of pop, for that matter—you may have noticed that one of these samples is yet again wedging its way into our contemporary music consciousness.

After its birth in the Netherlands at the tail end of the '90s, the relentless, bamboo-textured thump of the donk—both the name of the sample and an umbrella term for the genres that feature it—quickly proliferated, with major communities popping up in the UK (where it birthed the Scouse house and bounce scenes), Spain (where it was known by bumping and poky) and Russia (where it morphed into the now-infamous hardbass). Primarily a working-class phenomenon, the various donk scenes' neon and tracksuit-clad patrons and all-gas-no-brakes attitude toward dance music were quickly written off by media outlets as trashy and unsophisticated, with Vice noticeably calling it the " lowest common denominator of dance music" —a judgment that some donk communities have since worn as a badge of honor.

While the early '10s brought on a relative lull for the genre, the last few years have seen the sound's popularity explode yet again, only this time recontextualized by a new hard dance community with an ear for mashups and comedic nostalgia. No one knows this better than the lobster-masked, red-tracksuited donk trickster Lobsta B, whose ties to communities like the UK's Planet Fun and Poland's WIXAPOL put him at the center of this "nü donk" explosion. Framing it as a response to dance music's staunch seriousness in the last decade, he sees the resurgence of donk as a return to fun on the dance floor, where seemingly satirical aesthetics mask a sincere message of inclusivity. We sat down with the producer to discuss the history of donk's regional scenes and contemplate where its newfound popularity could be headed.

Klubbheads - Kickin Hard (1998)

First, Lobsta B gives us some basic knowledge: "A donk is an offbeat bass sound, best described as the noise a metal drainpipe makes when hit by a stick." The creation of the donk sample (which is also sometimes referred to as the "bamboo bass") is credited to Dutch producers Klubbheads, who made it on a Yamaha TX81Z rack synthesizer, and "Kickin Hard" is known as being the very first donk track.

Heavily influential throughout the '90s and '00s, Klubbheads also lent their production to massive hits in the hard house and trance scenes, like DJ Jean's classic "The Launch." In the greater donk sphere, the duo are also credited with creating the first hardbass track, "Hi-Per – Gimme More (Klubbheads Hi-Per Hard Mix)," which they later wrote off in an interview with Tri Poloski as a "joke" that had been written "in 20 minutes." But, whether they like it or not, their accidental discovery would lay the groundwork for the proliferation of donk across Eastern Europe.

Alex K - Royal Flush (2007)

Up until it closed in 2011, the UK's Wigan Pier nightclub was the Mecca of donk, and it's impossible to listen to a mix from that era that isn't packed with tunes by Alex K. "Alex K was responsible for bootlegging almost every pop and dance tune of that period and putting a donk on it, a practice still going strong today," says Lobsta B. Surprisingly, however, Alex K is Australian, and he called the genre of music he was making at the time NRG.

The Blackout Crew - Put A Donk On It (2008)

For the comedic delivery and sheer absurdity of Blackout Crew's breakout hit, donk's biggest anthem sure has had some staying power. The method of music production described in the song's chorus—where the Crew haphazardly put a banging donk on anything they damn well please—supplied the blueprint for the way most modern producers treat donk basslines.

"The Blackout Crew were effectively the world's first donk boy band. They showed us all that donk was tongue-in-cheek, alerting the rest of the UK to the working class subculture that emerged from Wigan in the noughties," says Lobsta B. The Crew was also the subject of a Vice donkumentary called Donk: 150 Beats Per Minute, in which a team follows Blackout Crew from their studio in Bolton to a headlining set at Wigan Pier, constantly poking fun at the community surrounding them. Whatever attitude Vice went into the project with, their misunderstanding thankfully ends in the joke being turned around on them—especially in the bit where their boat shoe-wearing journalist gets absolutely dunked on for his sense of style by a bunch of donk hooligans. Love it or hate it, "Put A Donk On it" is almost surely the most necessary track on this list.

M-Project VS Donk Terrorist - Nyakina Cat (2011)

In 2010, a group of Japanese artists released an album called Scouse! Tokyo Presents - Donk Bass Bootlegs. Taking influence from the established J-Core (Japanese hardcore) sound, these tracks were packed with saccharine anime vocals and frenetic melodies, as demonstrated in this Nyan Cat meme-inspired track by M-Project and Donk Terrorist, who are incidentally the same person. And just this past December, there was also a hardbass night in Tokyo called Cyka (which means "bitch” in Russian) that featured DJs Moe, Genick and M-Project.

DJ David Feat. Jay Santos - Caliente (2013)

Elsewhere, the donk sound was starting to pop up in unexpected places, like Spain, where it birthed the regional microgenres Bumping and Poky and labels like Bumping For Life and Funcore Music. The former is from the Basque country in the North, which had its own Wigan Pier-stye club called Jazzberri, while the latter bubbled up from the South. This distance allowed for the development of two unique sounds, and according to Lobsta B, "Bumping has harder and more erratic donks than UK Bounce, while Poky, on the other hand, is more simplistic and is recognizable for being full of squeaks, bleeps and screeches."

XS Project - Bochka Bass Kolbaser (2016)

And then there was hardbass. While the genre has recently been (nearly) memed to death thanks to this train and its online association with gopniks (a caricature of a rough, working class tracksuit enthusiast from Russia and other areas of the former Soviet Union similar to the UK's "chav"), this Russian donk derivative developed a very real subculture in the early '00s. While crafted in Klubbheads' studio in the Netherlands, hardbass's true roots are in St. Petersburg, where labels like JUTONISH pushed it into new forms, ratcheting up the pace and contorting the sound with distortion and more digital textures. Hardbass's donk sound is harsher and more metallic than its UK cousin, and it's spawned increasingly brutal subgenres like metal shade and plasma bass.

"XS Project introduced the world to Russian hardbass," Lobsta B states, continuing, "This music video made squatting slavs in tracksuits into an international meme and the iconic 'tri poloski' (Adidas's three stripes) synonymous with donk forever more. The hardbass scene has really embraced the joke, and I look into the lyrics of lots of hardbass songs, they're just about things like cooking dumplings, even though they sound like really hard, violent rap vocals."

In terms of popularity, hardbass may have become the dominant donk. Through the work of producers like Uamee, DJ Snat, Blyatman and Gopnik McBlyat, it continues to spread across Eastern Europe, even infiltrating the UK through hardbass-focused nights like Pumpingland

John Neal - You & I (2019)

When Wigan Pier closed in 2011, however, the UK's donk scene ground to a screeching halt. But after several years, the sound reemerged as UK Bounce, a more vocal-focused subgenre that mostly consists of hard edits of commercial chart music with donk and organ house basslines, both of which are featured in "You & I." Wigan continues to be the hub for this sound, supported by clubs like Pure, DJs like Andy Whitby, DJ Kenty and DJ Hannah Taylor, and of course, plenty of MCs to hype crowds.

Cher - Believe (DJ Fingerblast Remix) (2019)

In the last few years, a new wave of artists has been taking donk's raucous energy and cartoonish absurdity to even greater heights. Less focused on reshaping the donk bass sound, this generation of producers constantly recontextualizes it, usually in the form of donks slapped over cheeky mashups of camp classics by Crazy Frog and Vengaboys, with pitched up chipmunk vocals and high BPMs. The aesthetic is similarly chaotic, with WordArt and Comic Sans song titles blasted over bad Photoshop collages of emojis, minions, and pop icons given the gang weed treatment.

Operating predominantly in the southern UK, far outside of the influence of the still-thriving donk community in the Northeast, this scene's club nights have a stated emphasis on LGBTQ+ inclusiveness, like DJ Fingerblast and Count Baldor's Planet Fun in London and the Chicken Run-themed Farmageddon in Brighton. Names to look out for in this scene include Royal Tweedy, Peggy Viennetta, Voidboi and DJ Can't Say No.

LOBSTA B - Crazy Frog Ouverture (2021)

While Lobsta humbly neglected to include any of his own when selecting tracks for this list, some songs have such a profound impact that it would be a disservice to pass them over. Lobsta B's "Crazy Frog Ouverture," released on the second compilation from Polish hardcore collective Wixapol, flips "Axel F" into a gargantuan, operatic club banger. It's epic and completely absurd, while maintaining a sincerity that makes it the perfect calling card for the new scene. Among his contemporaries, Lobsta B remains the most donk-centric and one of the most prolific of the bunch, with edits like "Crank That Til I Come" and "Who Let The Donks Out" being other unmissable highlights.

Rebecca Black - Friday (Remix) ft Dorian Electra, Big Freedia & 3OH!3 (2021)

The US hyperpop scene has fully embraced donk in the past two years. Internet meme-slash-pop-singer Rebecca Black has even re-energized her infamous viral track "Friday" with chipmunked auto-tuned vocals, a banging donk, and a video full of literal memes. Huge names on the EDM scene have followed suit, like Marshmello and Carnage, who released the bounce anthem "Back In Time" last year. And while it's still a relatively small niche, there are donk nights appearing across the US, such as "DoesitBANG?" in Oakland, California.

Turning his attention to where the sound could be headed, Lobsta B says, "I think the crossover into pop, via hyperpop and PC music, is really important. You can see this in tracks like "X-Ray" by Tommy Cash—produced by Danny L Harle and featuring A.G. Cook (appropriately) cast as a cult leader in the video—or GFOTY and Count Baldor's donk-infused remix of 100 Gecs's "Stupid Horse." I believe the general public have become more accepting of hard, alternative dance music. It's all over major label pop projects, like Lady Gaga's official Dawn of Chromatic remix album. This crucial intersection could be the key to the future of donk."