The name "trop-house" was born in 2013 on the blog of Australian dj Thomas Jack (Thomas Johnston) to identify a Caribbean-tinged, beach-inspired form of deep house, achieved for example by incorporating steel drums and marimba. Ancestors of the genre were French dj Bob Sinclar (Christophe LeFriant), with singles like Love Generation (2005), World, Hold On (2006) and Rock This Party (2006), and Swiss dj Yves Larock (Yves Cheminade) with Rise Up (2007). Then came the "tropical rave" of Unicorn Kid (Scottish dj Oliver Sabin) and his hit True Love Fantasy, off the EP Tidal Rave (2011), San Francisco's dj Viceroy (Austen Afridi) with his EP Sunburn (2011), Dutch dj Bakermat (Lodewijk Fluttert) with his hit Vandaag/ One Day (2012), and the duo Klangkarussell (German djs Tobias Rieser and Adrian Held) with Sonnentanz/ Sun Don't Shine (2012). The phenomenon peaked between 2013 and 2015. The heroes of 2013 were Norwegian dj Kygo (Kyrre Gorvell-Dahll), with his remix of Ed Sheeran's I See Fire (2013) followed by his single Firestone (2014) and by the album Cloud Nine (2016), French duo Klingande (djs Cedric Steinmyller and Edgar Catry) with Jubel (2013), French duo Faul & Wad Ad (djs Maxime LeDu and Camil Meyer) with Changes (2013), Australian trio Rufus (Tyrone Lindqvist, Jon George and James Hunt) with Sundream (2013), and Swiss producer Nora En Pure (Daniela Niederer) with Come With Me (2013). The following year was the year of German dj Robin Schulz, who emerged with the remix of Dutch hip-hop group Mr Probz' Waves (2014) and the remix of French duo Lilly Wood and the Prick's Prayer in C (2010), followed by his single Sugar (2015); of British dj Alex Adair, who simultaneously remixed Ed Sheeran's Thinking Out Loud (2014) and released his own hit Make Me Feel Better (2014); of Belgian dj Lost Frequencies (Felix De Laet) with his remix of country singer Easton Corbin's Are You with Me (2012), followed by his own Reality (2015); of German dj Felix Jaehn who remixed Cheerleader (2014), a song composed by Jamaican singer Omi (Omar Pasley), who first recorded it in 2012, followed by Ain't Nobody Loves Me Better (2015), a remix of the song Ain't Nobody (1983) by Chicago's funk band Rufus and singer Chaka Khan; of San Francisco's dj Gryffin (Dan Griffith), who remixed Talking Body (2014) by Swedish singer Tove Lo (Ebba Nilsson); of London's dj Duke Dumont (Adam Dyment) I Got U (2014). Matoma (Norwegian dj Tom Lagergren) emerged with his remix of Astrid Smeplass' 2AM (2014), followed by Old Thing Back (2015), a remix of the Notorious B.I.G.'s posthumous song Want That Old Thing Back (2005), followed by another collaboration with Astrid Smeplass, Running Out (2015). Bakermat released Teach Me (2014) and Thomas Jack remixed Puertorican songwriter Gabriel Rios' Gold (2014). Trop-house hits of 2015 included Thomas Jack's Rivers (2015), the remix of Mike Posner's I Took a Pill in Ibiza (2015) made by SeeB (the duo of Norwegian djs Simen Eriksrud and Espen Berg), and the remix by Dutch dj Sam Feldt (Sammy Renders) of house-music diva Robin Stone's Show Me Love (1990). The beaches were flooded with trop-house hits: Raindrops (2015) from Los Angeles' dj SNBRN (Kevin Chapman), Sweet Lovin' (2015) from British dj Sigala (Bruce Fielder), Dream (2015) from Chicago's trio Autograf (Jake Carpenter, Louis Kha, and Mikul Wing), Sunset Lover (2015) from French producer Petit Biscuit (Mehdi Benjelloun), etc. The deluge slowed down the following year, but still added: Perfect Strangers (2016) by British dj Jonas Blue; Capsize (2016) by Los Angeles' duo Frenship (James Sunderland and Brett Hite); This Girl (2016) by French dj Kungs (Valentin Brunel); and the remix by Swedish producer Tobtok (Tobias Karlsson) of Tracy Chapman's Fast Car (1988).

Justin Bieber, Diplo and Skrillex legitimized the genre in the world of mainstream pop with Where Are U Now (2015), and then Kygo recorded It Ain't Me (2017) with pop star Selena Gomez.