In music, a stab is a single staccato note or chord that adds dramatic punctuation to a composition.
Stabs are used in a wide variety of music genres including jazz, rock, classical, funk, freestyle, trap, EDM, metal and ska.
They are most commonly notated as a short note value with a staccato dot, sometimes with the verbal marking "stab".
There's a rule of thumb in funk music that says short sounds are better than long: thus the drier the guitar hit, the tighter the horn stab, the slappier the bass, the more clipped the clavinet etc, the better.
[2] Early breakbeat hardcore, such as Prodigy's "Fire", and hip hop in general made use of stabs.