>are you saying nirvana was the culmination or progression of
>punk?

they were def the band that took elements of punk to the rock mainstream in the us, which never happened til they arrived.

im getting confused with this 'hip hop already was punk' theory youre talking about. i know people have been saying hip hop was the black punk for years (ie it was punk to black music overall), but it was actually more like the *new* black rock (the parallels are endless). so doesnt mean it cant have its own punk. to be honest, i think the closest american rap will have gotten is the harder crunk/southern rap stuff, even though it had none of punks anti establishment stance going on. but if we think of grime as the closest to hip hops punk, sonically, if nothing else, than maybe the nirvana thing will happen in another 5 or so years (ie grime came around in the early 00s, and it took over a decade for nirvana to take punk to the mainstream in the states).

>>but i think grime really was like the hip hop punk. it wass
>>fast/frenetic, ultra raw/angry, not pretty at all, didnt
>have
>>much to do with ideas of 'good taste', so in the same way
>old
>>rock fans said punk artists were talentless, couldnt sing,
>>couldnt play etc, loads of hip hop artists and fans thought
>>the same about grime artists.
>
>i agree (and please don't spoil this by bringing up the
>immediately accepted and quickly generic sounds of swizz
>beatz), but i still think for this to work as hip-hop's answer
>to punk there had to be an american form of grime. otherwise
>it's just another niche movement, and you guys are spectacular
>at creating music that never catches on anywhere else.

swizz? swizz was pretty influential on a lot of grime producers actually (if you didnt already know). i dont think it not catching on in the US matters. doesnt change the nature of the music or where it stands in relation to the rest of hip hop. british black music rarely catches on in the us, unless it can pass itself off as american. so maybe hip hop could never have its punk.

either way, its always difficult, maybe never a great thing to place rock timelines/expectations on other genres, even if hip hop resembles rock in so many other ways.