Janszoon

Okay. Now imagine if you will that One Direction continues being popular for the next 15 years—no increase in quality or anything, they just continue to be popular. Would you at that point decide that they're somehow good? If people told you that they were influential, would you suddenly regard them as worthwhile?

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A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man

Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

last.fm

midnight rain

I don't see it being the case. The whole idea behind being influential is that you were groundbreaking in some respect, that you did something new that a lot of artists hoped to emulate. It's like saying The Hives were influential to a bunch of post-punk revival bands when all they did was emulate bands that came before them.

I think it kind of is an antithesis to the whole bottom line behind being influential.

Janszoon

But what I'm saying is that, when I first heard Jay-Z back in the 90s, he wasn't groundbreaking. He wasn't anything new. He was just another generic guy with a hit song. But he continued to be popular year after year and then at some point I started encountering people like yourself who consider him some sort of unassailable icon. What I'm asking you is, if you were in that boat, would you suddenly decide the crappy guy wasn't crappy?

__________________
A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man

Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

last.fm

midnight rain

I still think Bob Dylan is crappy, despite the praise heaped on him. So it's not a matter of converting personal opinion so much as recognizing what the artist did.

And I know this conversation started with you dissing Jay-Z, but as someone who's not a big fan I'm not gonna try and justify his greatness (someone else is surely more qualified and knowledgable to do that). This is coming more from your opinion on 2pac