Transferrable poptimism?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

When you start exploring a new genre do you make any assumptions about whether the best-known acts/records/choons in that genre are likely to be the best or not? Do you think, for instance, that there must be a load of obscure better records lurking behind the famous ones that the Real Heads know about?

Of course I think for most people the answer is "depends" - but what does it depend on? For instance, here are two statements someone might make:

"James Brown isn't actually that good - there are loads of other obscure funk acts who are way better than him."

"Incantation aren't actually that good - there are loads of other obscure pan pipe moods acts who are way better than them."

I think statement #1 would raise eyebrows and statement #2 would be more generally accepted as likely to be true.

(I started on this train of thought because I realised when answering a thread on sukrat that for all I knew Merzbow might be a huge noise sell out and despised by all the real noise fans.)

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah Outkast and Kelis ARE weird and innovative - with varying degrees of success - but their innovation is so often used as a stick to beat the genre they came from and have now separated themselves from. Kelis = classic beyond classic; people who won't listen to r&b except Kelis = dud.

tbh I think a huge factor in Kanye's crossover appeal is his voice - he's similar to Missy in this respect, they have these very distinctive voices which aren't particularly tied to traditional hip-hop ideas of good flow, and they both really enunciate their words (as well as, in their singles, not using too much impenetrable hip-hop slang) (while still retaining lots of hip-hop mannerisms and signifiers to NOT separate themselves from their genre as much as Outkast).