wanna start by saying if you're interested in making boom bap/beats music/etc (i guess youcould call it "lo-fi hiphop" if u really wanted to), check out Quasimoto's album The Unseen. it'll change your life, really really spacey and head-noddy beats w/ the weirdest but dopest vocals ever. super inventive music and probably the best thing in the style. also listen to literally anything produced by J Dilla, dude was the best fucking producer to ever make hip hop

ok basically the whole genre you're talking about is taking the idea of hip-hop instrumentals a step further by making intentionally warped, woozy, tripped-out loops out of old samples, throwing some crunchy, off-kilter drums into the mix, and building a warm, hazy little universe of sound that u could listen to for hours over and over. so you're gonna wanna sample stuff directly from records or cassettes (or just process sounds you've made thru tape for that extra crunch). you wanna make everything dirty without being muddy. experiment w/ unconventional sounds and processing ideas--the best stuff often sounds saturated to the point of cracking apart, but it's always tasteful enough to hold back from just cranking the knob all the way and letting the distortion go overboard. this "genre" is such a personal, to-each-their-own type thing that it's really hard to slap a label on it and provide a few specific tips on how to make it. try just building a simple groove that doesn't play perfectly on-time, and mess with a few sample chops until you find something that loops so perfectly that you don't wanna stop listening to it.

mostly i think it's important to keep in mind that the world doesn't need another album full of mediocre loops posted on bandcamp/soundcloud w/ cover art from the simpsons or an anime screenshot lmao. make something inventive out of the idea of lo-fi loops and beats, make something your own, don't be afraid to experiment and make some weird off-kilter shit. the more free-thinking the better!

hope this was helpful in some way

recommended listening:
https://knxwledge.bandcamp.com/album/kauliflowr
https://sleepyeyes.bandcamp.com/
https://mndsgn.bandcamp.com/album/nomaps

also--check this album out because it's a great example of being extremely creative and original with the whole basic hip-hop blueprint. flying lotus is technically making "beats" but this shit is so inventive that it really deserves its own genre. untouchable lol. https://youtu.be/OPcFtrQfsJw?list=PLmTetWenDEjYdsdAUIDoyTYNLwCXNFgjV

Here's a great flowchart, since his discography is suuuper intimidating for new listeners. --> http://i.imgur.com/IOS3qYW.png

That being said, a great workflow to develop is bouncing and resampling so you can jump back and forth between audio and MIDI. Make your basic idea in MIDI, then bounce it all to audio so you can do fine tuned editing, then adding more MIDI to add more polish and detail, bouncing that, etc.

thisthisthisthisthis. ever since i started doing everything in audio, my life got so much easier and my workflow became way less headache-inducing.

Don't see anyone talking about processing field recordings here, and though I do record my own I think how you use them is much more important so I think I'll pop in with a few tips on how I like to make my recorded textures more texturey. 

First of all one of my favorite ways to get a fun tail on some foley that keeps the texture is to use a delay that re-pitches as you automate the delay time. If you have a few seconds of glass or leaves this can make the sample way crazier quickly.

I also like to run longer bits of foley through glitch plugins like buffeater and glitch at the tempo of the track I'm working in, then resample it and use little hits that are glitchy but kind of still synced feeling somehow.

Another thing I like to do (which is arguably made cooler if you have ableton 9.5's simpler) is to take a piece of foley and put it in a sampler and rather than actually write a part to the song to literally just record myself dragging a midi note up and down triggering a million notes while moving the start time. The volume and filter envelopes you put in the patch of whatever sampler you're using can have a huge effect on the character of the sound so I would say to experiment with that too, especially if you have self oscillating filters like the new ones in ableton 9.5.  Also try timestretching if you have the new simpler, but unless you have a powerhouse pc this may be tough on complex mode. The sounds you get with this trick can also basically be treated like foley and you can get even crazier results trying any of these tricks on them again.

Hope I got some interesting stuff, I didn't cover stuff like layering with drums and granular resampling/timestretching because I feel like there are enough resources on them already. Also if you want me to post examples of any of these tricks I would be happy to.

Thank you for all the ideas! Definitely gonna try some of this out

Thanks for the heads up. downloading rn

I mostly produce hip-hop/wonky beats music type stuff, so my favorite packs are usually ones full of boom-bap oriented sounds.
The ones I use the most are definitely Goldbaby's Urban Cookbook Vol 2, Sample Magic's Vinyl & Tape Drum Hits, and that one archive of, like, 300 drum machines that's floating around on the internet somewhere. I try not to stick to specific packs all the time though, since I much prefer working with simple samples and processing them to sound better as opposed to just pulling drums directly out of polished packs.

The Mangle is my personal favorite granular synth, but there's plenty out there.

Just checked this plugin out, looks awesome. Thanks for the tip