I mean, I'm familiar with all of this. I really only used it as an example because I think it shows how limiting "post" can be. It's not perfectly analogous to music genres, though.

People just have been so desperate on the blogs within the past two or three years to get the term "post-rap" to gain some traction. Just because we have post-punk, post-rock, post-hardcore, etc. doesn't mean that there needs to be a post-rap. What would it even mean? The last time this came up on hhh, a redditor was trying to define it as "serious but not serious rap by middle class white people", while others stated that it included acts from Das Racist and Odd Future to Death Grips. I'm sure you'd agree that his definition is ridiculous, but the point is that it seems to be a term in search of an identity.

Rap may be ever-changing, but there's not really any distinct, discrete set of artists that are part of a separate movement right now. Rap also doesn't move in some sort of linear, chronological path; it's all over the place. "Post-Rap" suggests otherwise. Rap has always been experimenting and changing. Beastie Boys, The Pharcyde, Outkast, MF Doom, and others represented something new and original at one point in time. We weren't beyond rap then and we're not now. Death Grips may be borrowing rap elements, but they're mostly an anomaly and it's just as much derived from punk, noise, and hardcore as it is hip-hop. If it really is deserving of a new genre label to distinguish it, at least make it something fitting. Who is to say that this is what the next phase of rap is? Why does there only have to be one, especially in a genre that is moving in every direction? "Post" has a sense of finality associated with it.

Plus, I think the way that the title "post-rap" is problematic for a number of other reasons. The first is that it suggests that it's some evolution of rap, and that it is in some way more artful and original. The second is that there are thousands of rappers still making music, and "post-rap" makes them sound outdated. This is particularly troublesome because the term "post-rap" is really only a term that some white people would ever imagine and support, and it's going to sound nothing like the black form of expression that it is. I'm one of the only black folks that I know who actually enjoys Death Grips. Their fans are 95% white.