Genre classifications came to be seen as elitist and racially coded by the 2020s.

Evidence

Genre feels increasingly irrelevant to the way we think about, create, and consume art. … Enforcing genre divisions felt elitist, or worse. In early 2020, Tyler, the Creator criticized the Grammy category of “urban” music, calling it “a politically correct way to say the N-word.” The Grammys dropped the term shortly afterward. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 630

Categorization

• XREF: The Grammys dropping ‘urban’ after Tyler’s critique parallels the status-and-signaling dynamics Marx tracks throughout the book.