Frank Kogan

Of course, one can argue that the gangstas, or punks, or beats, in keeping it real, are/were actually settling for too little
Can you please elaborate? Are they settling for too lax an adherence/rejection of their standards?

There's also, of course, the nit-picky response about the difference between "real" authenticity and "the cult" of it, and possibly Ray only criticizing the latter, but splitting hairs about what's "real" and what's not usually goes wrong, as the line between two such abstract things isn't usually so much a line as a gradient, as the debate about pop music itself goes.