Was just about to post what Transpotine did: Simon's notion of a "hardcore continuum" will never make sense if you think it's primarily about the transmission of sonic/stylistic influences in music, about familial relationships of influences between genres.
Simon's writing on the topic has always made it clear that it's about a certain community of listeners built around (largely but not solely black) East London, pirate radio etc. Only by using that as the frame can the relevance of certain sonic or stylistic motifs being reincarnated in different stylistic constellations be grasped.
I suspect the reason that people persistently misinterpret the notion is because of the desire to posit dubstep as the endpoint (or at least current position) in the continuum, despite the fact that dubstep has never really been an East London thing, with a couple of minor exceptions.
This doesn't have to be a criticism: DJ Clever's Troubled Waters [/i] and Unsung Heroes are among the finest d&b DJ mixes ever but they have nothing to do with SR's continuum. People are too quick to assume that if dubstep isn't "the nuum" it's automatically tainted by the post-97 d&b brush. But that's assuming there's an overly rigid and cyclical logic to the way the "nuum" works. There's not. It's just whatever is bumping in East London.
Simon's wrong about funky from my perspective, but not primarily in the way people on this thread are suggesting.
I think he's not picking up on what is actually a strong jamaican influence in the music. The sheer glut of ragga chat samples in the ruder, UK end of the scene is already more than a match for speed garage if not quite 2-step (but it's getting there), and sonically I think it has about the same kind of relationship to dancehall (i.e. a complicated but real one) that 2-step and grime had, respectively.
Sure, jamaican influences compete with african influences and other caribbean influences, but I think it's premature to conclude the latter two achieve prominence in funky at the expense of the former. Remember, the last time soca was so prominent an influence was 2001 and the era of "socabeat" 2-step, which was simultaneously the most obviously jamaican that "nuum" music ever got (give or take ragga jungle).
Simon complains that the music isn't cheesy/flavasome in the way 'ardkore or 2-step were, and that "Bongo Jam" constitutes an exception that proves this rule. I'd direct him towards, well, a whole multitude of tunes that fit this bill - stuff from Fuzzy Logic and Hard House Banton and Malice and Mario Productions being just the tip of the iceberg here.
However, I don't think Simon claims that funky is outside the "nuum" - it is the current incarnation of this continuum by definition, by dint of its audience/community. He's merely claiming that he doesn't like much of it. This initial and I suspect gut-level ambivalence leads him to some theoretical conclusions that I think are off-base, but then, I would say that - my initial, gut-level reaction was one of unabashed adoration.
