It’s been 30 years since Kurt Cobain blew his own head off with a shotgun. It’s impossible to imagine mainstream rock success in bed with that kind of despondency in this day and age. Rap might harbour that kind of extreme contradiction. That’s because it hasn’t lost all vitality within the culture. It remains to some extent a safe space for transgression. I can see Ye losing his shit Cobain style someday, for instance. But nobody in rock and roll. There are no more Cobains at the top. The ecosystem which provided for their ascent in the first place has been totally destroyed. Back then, during the early Nineties — the dying embers of the heroic phase in the counterculture — Cobain’s angst and ultimately his self-slaughter only compounded his artistic credentials.
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