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

[weasel-seeker.livejournal.com]

Was that really always the case though?

I definitely got that sense circa Speakerboxx/The Love Below when everyone was enamoured with Dre's spotty attempts to become Prince, but ATLiens? Stankonia? They've certainly been presented as kind of a yin/yang Poet/Gangsta group, but it's not as through 3000's been completely devoid of gun talk or bling.

Is the question whether or not there are BETTER acts than crossover-to-pop acts, or are we talking on the meta-level of how they're written about in the press and the narratives that get created to faclitate mainstream acceptance? Because those seem fairly distinct from one another.