Is legitimising hip-hop through its most experimental artists
undermineing the status of hip hop as a legitimate musical genre?

This is a belated response to a couple of threads about the merits of hip hop on this board.

If someone calls it a shit genre of music and claims there is no talent required to make, people leap to its defence by namechecking mf doom, mike ladd, APC, prefuse 73+ etc..

That's fine, but I've got a feeling the unstated concensus is "yes, hip hop is shit, but the stuff that is more like indie rock in aesthetic is ok by us".

This pro hip hop argument ranges from idiotic NME/Rocksound reviews of hip hop "oh..don't worry..its got the odd guitar..so its ok" to the more sensible but quite condescending arguments above.

If someone said all guitar based music is shit ...we don't all jump up and point "it's not all like The Kooks you know...check out ex models!"