Instead of black bands using white rockers as yardsticks for success, white bands used black hip-hoppers as yardsticks for success.

In the show, people write letters to the white denim-clad rocker, and he answers some on the air.

"Pretty Fly" may be caustic social satire, but it's also a sign that white rockers feel threatened by the current black music renaissance.

The song is a sarcastic response to critics, sung from the point of view of a racist white rocker who wonders "Don't they know rock's just for whites?

Hip-hop and rhythm and blues surged as well, both in sales and symbolically: rappers now represent pop's rebellious core, as white rockers once did.

But rock is still largely a genre played by white rockers and celebrated by white audiences.

As Echols notes, in the disco era, a scruffy straight white rocker resented the expectation that he had to dress better at clubs.

A 50-year-old blind African-American and former street musician, he was discovered in the mid-1990's by the young white rockers now backing him.

Across from the coffee table was a white rocker, an afghan neatly draped over the back.

Without any punk included, the compilation reveals a clear color line; as white rockers grew sappier and more pretentious, rhythm-and-blues and funk kept innovating throughout the decade.