>there's a difference between bringing with you your experience
>and knowledge in music (and everything else, but i digress)
>and expecting music to fit specific criteria of a genre and
>then being disappointed when it doesn't.

Just like you believe musicians make the type of music they want, I believe that people *want* to hear music they think is good. It's awfully presumptious and even a bit condescending to always talk about "those" music-fans who listen to/dismiss/dislike/like/whatever music for the "wrong" reasons.

If someone say "This shit ain't real hip-hop, it sucks!", that statement IMO means that that person have certain sonic expectations for Hip-Hop that the piece of music fails to reach.

I guess you think it's wrong to have that but what if those sonic expectations contribute to the concept of *quality* in the Hip-Hop genre for said person? Is that wrong?

And what if he/she says "It's not real hip-hop but it's great". Does it really matter at all then?



>>How then does the genres not exist when they are in
>>fact defined by said boundaries?
>
>because they are completely subjective. you yourself don't
>consider certain music "true" representatives of a said genre,
>which is a case in point of how little genres really mean.

If you are talking about debating whether artist A is genre X or Y, then yes, that is meaningless. However, so is practically all music-discussion if viewed like that. Personally, I find these types of discussions FAR more intteresting than discussions about quality which is TRULY subjective. With genre-definitions, there is at least SOME shared consensus which makes the different perceptions and definitions from various people quite interesting IMO. It's not a favorite subject but I find it fun...