The lyrics are often inspired by horror movies and are performed over moody, hardcore beats. Horrorcore defines a style of hip hop music that focuses primarily on dark, violent, gothic, transgressive, macabre and/or horror-influenced topics that can include death, psychosis, psychological horror, mental illness, satanism, self-harm, cannibalism, mutilation, suicide, murder, torture, drug abuse, and often supernatural or occult themes. Fans and artists have been blamed for numerous high-profile instances of violent criminal activity, including the Columbine High School massacre, the Red Lake high school massacre, the Farmville murders, murders of law enforcement officers, and gang activity. Horrorcore has incited controversy, with some members of the law enforcement community asserting that the genre incites crime. Some horrorcore artists eschew supernatural themes or exaggerated violence in favor of more subtle and dark psychological horror imagery and lyrics. While exaggerated violence and the supernatural are common in horrorcore, the genre also frequently presents more realistic yet still disturbing portrayals of mental illness and drug abuse.
Unlike most hardcore hip hop and gangsta rap artists, horrorcore artists often push the violent content and imagery in their lyrics beyond the realm of realistic urban violence, to the point where the violent lyrics become gruesome, ghoulish, unsettling, or slasher film- or splatter film-esque. Its origins derived from certain hardcore hip hop and gangsta rap artists, such as the Geto Boys, which began to incorporate supernatural, occult, or psychological horror themes into their lyrics. Horrorcore, also called horror hip hop, horror rap, death hip hop, or death rap, is a subgenre of hip hop music based on horror-themed and often darkly transgressive lyrical content and imagery.