Are you talking creatively, technically, or the whole kit/kaboodle?

Technically, it comes down to what you're using to create your music in - what DAW (digital audio workstation). Noticed you listed this in Hip Hop - If you're making beats in FL Studio or something like that, then are you just doing everything within fruity loops, or are you exporting into something else like Cubase or Pro Tools?

If you are, then are you exporting it as mixed down loops, or are you exporting individual tracks so that you have more control inside your proper workstation?

Are you adding live instruments and vocals - and if you are, what equipment are you recording them with? What do you like about it, what do you feel needs improvement? I highly recommend you do add some live elements to your tracks, just to make them sound less machine like.

Speakers are a must, if you're currently just using headphones. Also take into account the fact that your room should sound good - so don't just ignore acoustic treatment.

On the creative side of things - how long do your patterns last before they loop - if you take a listen to, for example, Kanye... his beats are about 4 bars long and then they repeat. So within that 4 bars, you have little repetition, and then a repeat after 4 bars. It's a nice length that's inbetween making every single bar different, and having every single bar exactly the same.

Again, adding human elements is a good thing.... if you're editing in a DAW then you can play around with plugins on different sections and reversing things and all that sort of thing, to add variation and interest to the music.

Real drumkits work really nicely for this! Record a drumkit, chop it up, loop it, mangle it...

If you feel like it, you could apply to do a music production course - but I noticed when I did one that it was much more useful for the rock guys in my class than the hip hop guys. So long as you can get your head around basic signal flow and gain staging, then you should be right without doing a full degree or anything like that.

Hope that helps... check out the link in my sources if you have some more questions to ask about the nuts and bolts side of things, try "Womb University" for your basic audio questions.

Other link in my sources is the SAE college reference materials... free to peruse at your leisure, and highly useful as a reference tool. Once you've absorbed a bit of that, then maybe a book might be useful - "Modern Recording Techniques" by D. Huber is one that seems to be well written but again, not sure how useful it will be for your style of music, as most studio literature is written for guys recording bands and such.
Source(s):
http://www.thewombforums.com
http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/

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