Two observations:
- The British Invasion in the US in the 60ies was by any standard more successful than the one in Arnheim in 1944. That said, the Waffen SS would have probably preferred The Beatles to British paratroopers.
- Of course Rap and Hip-Hop is music and it has left a lasting imprint on other forms of music. The way the drums sound and the patterns they play today even on New Country recordings has a Rap/Hip-Hop influence, just as the drumwork of Disco in the 70ies crept into how, say, AC/DC used the drums in their music. Punk brought prominent bar-chording back into music (at the cost of riffs that had dominated it for much of the early 70ies) and you can still hear that today with bands like Green Day or Jimmy Eat World. Reggae spawned syncopated rhythms and if there had been no Bob Marley, there would have been no Police and Police's influence grew branches into the strangest places, be it Canada (80ies Rush) or Ireland (U2). Nirvana/Soundgarden - no, I don't like them -, but their non-traditional approach to harmony and where chords are allowed to go can be heard in so much commercial music today, not just with Nickelback.
To a ghetto kid today, Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five is a more relevant cultural influence from the past than Sgt. Pepper, with me it's the other way around. But while I'm typing this, my office stereo blares "Sons & Lovers" from Alcatrazz' second album (featuring a then little-known guitarist named Steve Vai), so don't believe what I say.
And I never bought into the theory that music today is less elaborate than it used to be. The focus of what parts of the music are elaborated and emphasized just changes over time, that is all. I find drums and vocals too loud in a lot of modern recordings, my son and my significant other always complain that Ian Gillan's vocals are buried in the mix on DP recordings (when Ian Gillan pushed the fader up once in the studio in the early 70ies, Blackmore pushed it down again and snapped: "Who do you think you are, f***ing Tom Jones?!")
The influences of the British Invasion are alive and well, I assure you, just listen to how backing vocals are employed today, but so is the influence of funk, R'n'B, rap, hip-hop and drums'n'bass. I listened to Parliament (Funkadelic) intensively for the first time comparatively recently - that music wasn't any less intricate than, say, a Jethro Tull record and I was amazed how many things I heard that have become staples in modern music. And it's all intertwined anyway: No Beatles, then no Sly & the Family Stone, no Sly, then no rap and hip-hop like we hear it today.
Don't!!!
Push me ...
'cause I'm ...
Close-to-the ...
Eeeeeeeedge ...
I hated it when it came out - has it had a lasting influence? Darn right it has and I like it today.
That study is bonkers, it's like asking whether mankind owes more - Creationists can tune off now - to reptiles or to amphibians in its evolution. The answer is that we wouldn't be there today in the shape and form we are if either one of them hadn't existed.
Free your mind and your
ass scales will follow.