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It's nearly all some kind of pretension or another. Reggae at its peak was only Rastafarians pretending to play instruments that they couldn't, or barely could, play-acting for weed-addled foreigners more fascinated by the novelty of dreadlocks and funny accents and the hipness/ rebel cachet of liking a black music form than in any kind of music-quality. Rock is the sound of the middleclass reactionary, too angry to not identify the themselves with the things they think are uncool, existing only in contrast to them. Jack Daniels, tattoos and cigarettes do not a bad boy make, just as weed and a guitar do not a pseudo-hippy make, oh wait, yes thy do. Look at me, man, I've got mystique!

As a character in the movie Almost Famous said "They make us feel cool". That's what it's all about for pop. Music for young people has changed from an edifying force to an image-marketing device. Later on, when they have already made millions, sometimes rock musicians might edify us, but mostly they try to convince us that the booze and nicotine hype is contagious, that we can catch it by pretending to be like them and come to a concert. Reggae has nothing but its "hipness", and never had much more than that, reggae musicians don't grow, possibly because they never make enough money to feel secure taking risks, but more like for other reasons.

The middleclass reactionaries evolve when they do by spotting the shallowness and moving away from it. Rock bands, if they last long enough usually evolve because they can afford things like boredom, perfectionism, imagination etc. When reggae musicians listen, break out of the self-congratulatory incest, try to make improve their musicianship even marginally and focus on making good music, Bob Marley happens. As it is, Reggae is pretty much dead because its artists never got to where they could have the imagination even to steal competently.

What you still have, say with the Mighty Diamonds or Toots and the Maytals is are old guys who could never really sing with instruments they could never really play, still just plunking along for pot heads and nostalgiacs. Dancehall and hip-hop, as slavishly dedicated as they are to any hooks that will get your attention-span deprived head bobbing and make them some preteen money, with gimmicks that any high-school dropout can use to get a reasonably complex sound, are the exact reverse. They will go as is until people want more, then maybe Sean Paul and Shaggy will evolve.

Bob Marley achieved something by mixing blues with the generic plunk-plunk of local music, not a lot, but a lot of the time something real. Weed can make even the most banal lyrics sound profound. (Don't write songs while you smoke.) REM, for example, did something real on Automatic for the People too. In both instances, meaning Marley's good songs and REM's AFTP, it sounded like these people were doing something that they liked, that they thought sounded good instead of chucking out their crap for the masses. It wasn't about what we thought, it was about what they thought, felt. I could be wrong.

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