au contraire
>a lot of this boils down to trendy music snobs getting pissed off that their "secret" music is crossing over
not in my case, i'm eager for grime to cross over -- i was extremely disappointed that 'I luv u' only got to number 29, -- i really thought it would be #1. was slightly disappointed that 'Pow/FWD' didn't bust into the Top 10 but got to the edge of it, am buzzed that Kano has gone in the charts and looks like he's going to really happen this year, excited that Lady Sov has got signed in a mega deal. But there is a difference between the thing itself crossing over and some not-quite-right external take on it crossing over. not that MIA's record even sounds grimy, but etc etc etc, that is the general principle under discussion...
"competes" doesn't just include economically, but in a wider sense media, credit, people feeling like they've "done" a genre when they've heard one example of it (especially when it isn't even really an example of it). you possibly have little idea how magazines work, especially in America -- they really do operate on a "we'll let one through" mindset. So Moby was the techno represensative, Goldie and later Roni Size was the drum'n'bass poster child. it's like a quota system. i know whereof i speak here.
i'm not heavily invested in dancehall, love it but i barely keep up with it, but i think it is a perfectly legitimate annoyance for someone like Stelfox, who really lives the stuff, to feel peeved that for various factors the MIA record will get the critical attention and acclaim that a brilliant album like that Ward 21 one will never get.
the street scenes like grime, dancehall, etc have their poppy currents and own impulses to crossover and i would rather see this emerge organically from the scene itself, as is actually happening with Lady Sov and Kano (although 'typical me' is a misstep sonically, i think--why do hip hop guys often have such a lame idea of "rock"?) etc, or has happenend repeatedly with dancehall with the success of sean paul, beenie man, and shaggy
the sexism angle is just ridiculous -- are you really suggesting that an artist who's female (and brown-skinned) should be immune from criticism? all the evidence would suggest the opposite actually -- a kind of inverse sexism/racism is at at play, in fact -- A/ a "girls just wanna have fun", quasi-feminist sympathy vote c.f. le tigre getting allowances for making defective dance music cos it's diy spirit innit, and B/ an exoticizing that equates all brownskinned peoples as the same, and beyond criticism by dint of their skin