What even is it? Like what is the general design of it??? I know nothing of it & would like to incorporate some of it's style into a more modern scene but without obstructing it's essence, does it just have a high cut filter slapped on everything or?? I'm i'm not mistaken Uppermost used it's style in one of his tracks?

(Uppermost) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AfNzhLMZAQ

(this is low-life hip-hop if you're unaware of the style)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLEOwgm7OUQ

either sampling from vinyl and getting all of the weird artifacts that can come with it, or emulating them like tieme typhonic said. try listening for individual elements in some lo-fi sounding tracks (drums, bass, sample) and look at them under an EQ with a spectrograph, see where things get cut off and come in at.

also 90% of the "lo-fi hip hop" scene on soundcloud is very reminiscent of the stuff j dilla and nujabes did. if youre not familiar with them, you're in for a treat!!

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

Creating the "lofi" sound is actually not as hard as people make it out to be. If you've ever heard a song off of Views by Drake, all of the songs are produced by Noah "40" Shebibe and have this sound to them. He's kind of infamous for this lo-fi underwater-ish sound, and his processing techniques are not that advanced.

In an interview, he states about how his drums are not highpassed, they are downsampled. So instead of a filter turning down frequencies, the high end frequencies on the drums don't even exist.

I've messed around with this technique in Ableton using a high pass filter and redux, and it actually creates a very cool effect. The biggest part of creating good lo-fi drums though in my opinion is good sample selection.

Hope this could give some insight!

+1 40 productions are really good . I think that decimort2 is a great plugin for this . You could take a look in to that .

Instead of using a bitcrushing or downsampling plugin with a low pass filter, I actually discovered something pretty interesting when trying to recreate that OVO40 sound: Actually export a bounce of the file at a lower sample rate, then re-import it. I know 40 uses Pro Tools, so one day I loaded up PT12 and started throwing drum samples and loops into a project and exporting them at all the different sample rates below 44.1 kHz. This gave me that "underwater" sound without all of the harshness you get from virtual downsampling. 22.05 kHz worked the best from my memory, but experiment with different sample rates and see what you get!