RP Boo views footwork's spread into other genres as growth that sparks change without diluting the Chicago source

RP Boo is untroubled by footwork elements appearing in other genres: ‘It has to grow. It is so alive.’ After Rashad networked internationally, drum & bass and other subgenres began absorbing footwork ideas. His framework: anyone who takes on footwork influence still ends up sounding changed within their own genre — ‘something sparked this dude’ — while the Chicago source remains distinct and irreplaceable. He encourages outsiders to come to Chicago to hear the original context and believes appropriation without understanding eventually fails. Underlying it is a theory of transmission: ‘the sounds will always be here’; music grows by being let out and taken up, not by being guarded.

Examples

Drum & bass producers folding in footwork rhythms produced hybrids that still read as their own genre but audibly changed — ‘something sparked this dude’ — without replacing the Chicago original.

Assessment

Contrast RP Boo’s attitude to genre appropriation with a protectionist stance. What does ‘the sounds will always be here’ imply about his theory of musical transmission?