The state of pop culture has shifted a lot over the decades. The idea of the “rock star” had pretty much faded with the death of Kurt Cobain and the grunge era. Eventually, the battle for cultural supremacy was the pop stars and boy bands versus hip-hop. Through a war of attrition, hip-hop outlasted and became the face of pop culture. Nowadays, it’s hard to quite define pop culture at all outside of memes and internet wormholes. By 2015, though, Vince Staples saw that hip-hop was the defining cultural export. As a result, he said our old ideas of what a rockstar looks like had changed significantly. “Rap is the genre. Rap is culture. Hip-hop culture is popular culture; it is American culture. Tell me who the rock star is right now?” he questioned in a 2015 interview . Videos by VICE The interviewer suggested that Taylor Swift was a rock star. But Vince Staples countered by defining her in pop terms and noting how she also embodied hip-hop aesthetics.…