A kung fu fighter in a disco

There is the theory that innovation largely comes from an agonistic impulse, the feeling that 'I can do something better', and from misunderstood imitation - as with say Owen Gray and Kenneth Richard getting the rhythm a bit wrong on their copy of Rosco Gordon's 'No More Doggin'' and inventing all subsequent Jamaican music (yes, spectacular oversimplification). I mention this because the former leads to that defining-against tendency, in that punk was an attempt to go back to energetic rock instead of the prog art rock, and so on, whereas the latter doesn't - how does reggae ever define itself against anything? That might be cheating, as it's the dominant form in its territory, but I'm not sure hip hop ever did it either.

So I guess I'm saying with these examples that it can work either way. I don't even think it's a criterion of success for a genre/area/aesthetic.