Beatbox, popularized by Doug E. Fresh, is the vocal percussion of hip hop culture. It is primarily concerned with the art of creating beats, rhythms, and melodies using the human mouth.^[69] The term beatboxing is derived from the mimicry of the first generation of drum machines, then known as beatboxes. As it is a way of creating hip hop music, it can be categorized under the production element of hip hop, though it does sometimes include a type of rapping intersected with the human-created beat.

The art was quite popular in the 1980s with artists like the Darren "Buffy, the Human Beat Box" Robinson of the Fat Boys and Biz Markie displaying their skills in beatboxing. It declined in popularity along with bboying in the late '80s, but has undergone a resurgence since the late '90s, marked by the release of "Make the Music 2000." by Rahzel of The Roots.

The term "beatboxing" is sometimes used to refer to vocal percussion in general (see vocal percussion for details).