i’d agree that it can be a fine line between homage & revival but the latter is usually indicative of a dearth of new ideas. I guess I should have been more clear that most people probably don’t give a shit if music is innovative and that in fact that’s usually a negative in commercial terms. which of course only makes hip hop’s long run of combined commercial/creative success all the more impressive. what I meant is that the true creative heirs to the pioneers of any genre are never the ones whose influences you can directly cite.

Is the new Brian Jonestown Massacre album seriously called My Bloody Underground? How does Yo La Tengo feel about that?

Weiss this new genre should be called “pop” which is pop spelled backwards.

It’s pretty simple actually why Slug crossed over. It’s because he’s the only underground dude who understood and knew how to do well what ‘Pac once told BIG: “Ya’ gotta’ rap for the [ladies].”

Your assessment is right on point Weiss.

that’s an interesting comment, b/c hip hop IS pop music, in the true “popular” meaning of the term, and that’s always been one of its’ great strengths. the first major post-modern form of pop music. it’s what allowed hip hop to stay on the cutitng edge of music for such a long, and frankly unprecedented, period of time. I mention this b/c the “underground hip-hop” of the late 90s was a precusor to the revivalism that hip hop had managed to avoid up to that point. not the original axis of labels you named, which were FWD-thinking (def jux most obviously) but in their imitators & the concept of saviors dedicated to prtoecting hip hop by defining its’ boundaries. the same exact thing, on a smaller scale, killed off drumnbass in the late 90s. not on on some hip hop is dead tip at all, just that revival equal stagnancy. dudes can still make GOOD records by flipping soul samples & multi syllabic flows but that formula will never, ever be INNOVATIVE again. whereas while people may call guys like RZA/Primo/Pete Rock traditionalists now in the 90s those dudes were all way out on the cutting edge of music, as avante-garde as John Cage in his day.

I do find it intersting that Atmosphere, one of the most traditional of all those late 90s groups, was the one make the great crossover leap. it does make sense - Co Flow was too weird, Fondle ‘Em too insular, Quannum too smart, etc. as for a genre buzzword, how about “Dad Rap”? it already happened w/UK underground dance culture, where all the original ‘88-’93 ravers are in their late 30s/early 40s, which is just where Slug & El-P and all their mates will be in 5 years. you know, time to think about what kind of serious artistic legacy you’ll be leaving behind.