When will rap music be less mainstream?

Bongo-Furious, didn't mean to get in your pocket. Obviously from your very selective response you must deal with these people everyday. If you are/were involved in any of those "songs" you mention with Pdiddy/Mac/Combs/Daddy, I'm sorry you've obviously lost whatever musical talent you once possesed.

My point, which you in no way addressed, was that the statement Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin among others didn't acknowledge his/their predecessors was WAY off the mark, and I stand by that.

Be it Johnny Lee Hooker, Lead Belly, Koko Taylor, I had and have heard from many of those great rock bands and acts that these great blues artists were their influences.

Also, your dead wrong on current musical tastes too. You obviously don't see all of teenagers I do combing through record stores looking for 20+ year old music, and downloading all sorts of songs from my youth, that's why new music sales are way down. At least that what the Wall Street Journal, and many of the mainstream media outlets say. We never checked out old music as teenagers, we only were interested in new music, admittedly some of it sucked, but we wanted to be on the cutting edge. Current kids do that because what is shoved down their throats by the music biz now, which you seem to be in by your admission is currently clueless as to who is buying music.

To me you sound ignorant, myopic and clueless, and I mean that in the best way. If you really are in the music business and have been for 30 yrs you are probably part of the problem. Get out now and let some kids come in, you don't know what you are talking about.

How many die-hard "hip-hop" bashers here have never heard the DJ Shadow album Endtroducing?

And didn't Willie Dixon sue Zep for them totally ripping him off without giving him credit?

He actually sued them over "Whole Lotta Love" and they settled it with him as soon as they found out about the suit, it was in the late 1980's. The reason it never went to court was their respect for him, and also the fact that the song does sound extremely similar to one of his songs from the early '50's which I can't remember the title of, but the opening riffs did sound incredibly similar to the bridge of Wille's song.

This is one of the incidents that I remember from Led Zep talking about thier influences because I saw an interview with Jimmy Page talking about the incident and his admiration for all of the Chess regards group, with special attention to Willie Dixon and Johnny Lee Hooker (was he at Chess?).

01-09-10: Macdadtexas
My point, which you in no way addressed, was that the statement Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin among others didn't acknowledge his/their predecessors was WAY off the mark, and I stand by that.

You shouldn't make emphatic statements when the facts don't entirely back that up.

Led Zeppelin released "The Lemon Song" in 1969 on the Led Zeppelin II album,and it's original writing credits were Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. That particular song "borrows" lyrics from prior blues artists work.

The first, second and fourth verses of "The Lemon Song," are clearly recognizable from Howlin' Wolf's original song "Killing Floor".

Also is Plant's "Squeeze the lemon 'til the juice runs down my leg" phrase, look to Robert Johnson's 1937 song "Traveling Riverside Blues." Of course, Johnson wasn't the only blues artist to use this type of imagery. In the 1929 song "I Want It Awful Bad," Joe Williams had included the lines "You squeezed my lemon/Caused my juice to run," and Roosevelt Sykes used similar imagery in his 1937 song "She Squeezed My Lemon." Nonetheless, it is highly unlikely Plant/Page created the line on their own.

The phrase "you take my money, give it to another man" most likely was taken from "Black Eye Blues" by Ma Rainey.

It wasn't until Led Zeppelin WAS SUED BY ARC Records in 1972, and an out of court settlement, that the band was forced to give those blues artists writing credits on Zepp pressings.

Honestly, we could give you a long, long, long, list of famous songs and artists in the great age of Rock & Roll who did (what we now) legally consider theft of prior work. Many others were more performer than songwriters and musicians. That doesn't take anything from them, by the way.

Of course, back then, it was a bunch of kids doing songs they love. But, in some ways, everyone always knew songwriting credit was where all the money was made. A choice not to list someone meant more money in their own pockets.

I should also mention that I liberally "borrowed" all these facts/assertions from this web page