>and I'm trying to avoid making this about Jay but at the same
>time he was the first name that came to mind in typing up the
>original post. It's more about what he represents than him at
>this point.

There is no denying that he and many of his contemporaries are the "old guard" so to speak. The problem that you're addressing is that there is essentially no "new guard" yet...

But how can anyone expect the stars from 15 years ago to still carry this shit and be relevent?

Its really rare that somebody can be at the forefront of importance to his genre for multiple generations. One of the only people I can think of off top is Herbie Hancock because he drastically reivented himself multiple times. In the vast majority of cases though people either a)fall off b)become a self parody or c) become irrelevent because someone new renders them irrelevent.

The only thing I can say is that when something new comes, we probably won't see it coming.