Diversity? I'm not sure that you can attribute college kids playing rap music to any push for diversity - just the opposite, in fact. If you haven't noticed Rap is the biggest genre out there right now. How exactly is the mainstream bedrock of the contemporary music industry in any way diverse? OH let me guess. . . because you don't like it, and the artists are black? Guess you're just another white man being victimized by those multi-culti affermative action types, huh?
That's really odd. I'm 22, myself, kind of out of touch with contemporary music (don't much care for most of it) but I liked greenday years and years ago, in the early 90s. . . when I was in grade school, haha! I don't really listen to them much anymore, but of course I'm familiar with the American Idiot album, and I guess that particular song is decent, but not something I cling too. Oddly enough, however, a friend of my fathers, in his late 40s or early 50s, I beleive, who used to be a real hard rocker and something of a biker back in his day is completely nuts for that album. I was kind of embarased when I found a burned copy of it in my dad's car and then he had to tell me how evangelical this friend of his is about the album. I spoke with him myself and was really suprised by how much he's digging greenday. I guess they're still slightly better than most of the lame emo rock out there today, but it struck me as sort of odd that they should have any sort of cross generational appeal.
I think that more often it's record labels do market research and figure out what's going to sell this season, throw together some losers who can play a tune, a safe tune, a catachy one that kind of sounds like the one that sold last season, and then they throw millions into advertising and ride that cash cow 'till they can start the cycle again.