What's working in Drill
This page turns into a live chart of real drill songs, ranked by Songbrain's virality score.
3 songs analysed in Drill so far — the chart opens at 10.
Counted: real uploads whose artists put them on the public leaderboard. Last update Oct 19, 2026.
Drill basics
General genre knowledge — not from the chart above.
4 things that make a drill track work
- 1Slide the 808s with intent. It is the defining drill texture.
- 2Let a dark melody — strings, piano or synth — carry the mood.
- 3Deliver clearly. Drill rewards flows that cut through.
- 4Repeat the hook, but vary the ad-libs around it.
Drill questions
What is the difference between grime and drill?
Both sit around 140 BPM, but grime has skippy, garage-rooted drums and rapid-fire flows. Drill uses sliding 808s and a slower, half-time bounce.
What is sample drill?
Drill built on recognisable melodic samples, often from R&B or pop songs, flipped over drill drums.
Where do the numbers on this page come from?
From Songbrain's public leaderboard: songs that artists uploaded for analysis and chose to show publicly. Reference tracks from commercial releases are not counted. Each song gets a 0–100 virality score from its audio. The page refreshes weekly, and a genre's chart opens once it has 10 songs.