The 'trip hop' label was coined by Mixmag in 1994 but was rejected by the Bristol artists it described

The term ‘trip hop’ first appeared in print in June 1994 in Mixmag, coined by journalist Andy Pemberton to describe DJ Shadow’s track ‘In/Flux’ and similar Mo’ Wax releases. The Bristol artists most identified with the genre — including Portishead’s Geoff Barrow — publicly rejected the label, with Barrow calling it ‘nonsense’ developed by Londoners that ‘the people in Bristol just had to put up with.’ This pattern — an outsider press label retroactively applied and then disputed — is common in electronic music genre naming. The contested label remains in wide use.

Examples

Portishead: ‘The whole trip-hop tag was nonsense.’ IDM was similarly rejected by Aphex Twin and Autechre. Genre labels are often imposed by journalists, not artists.

Assessment

Explain why genre labels like ‘trip hop’ are often contested. What does the Bristol artists’ rejection of the term reveal about the relationship between scenes and press categories?