There's no reason why one has to only like symphonic music or hip hop. There are many kinds of music we find completely innocuous now that were shocking, controversial and condemned at their emergence. Polyphony was controversial in Europe when it first emerged! Romanticism, too. Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring provoked booing and rioting at its premier, and a few decades later it's deemed safe enough for use in a Disney cartoon (Fantasia). Tango was (wrongly) derided as a brothel dance. Jazz criticized for being unmusical. Rock for being noise. And so on.
Look, I'm not saying one must accept every music genre, or that all of them survive the test of time. But by now, hip hop is an indelible part of how most humans conceive of music. Its rhythm, its ambulatory syncopation, its bass stab; the idea that the non-chromatic tonality of the spoken word can be leveraged, played with, then recombined with chromatic music; the idea that syllables can be stretched, altered, paced into flow and rhythmic texture; the record player as an awesome percussive instrument; sampling and looping previously recorded music to make entirely new ones, and many more revolutionary musical ideas have been turned by hip hop musicians into something that's catchy, popular, accessible and expressive. Hip hop has changed music theory as practiced by the popular consciousness. It is the most important evolution in music since rock and roll. You may not like most of what you've heard from it, but I guarantee you, some piece of music you like somewhere has been deeply influenced by it. And given how pervasive hip hop is, how it's been absorbed, adapted and reconfigured by almost every culture and every niche, there's bound to be some form of it you'd like if you gave it a chance.
For figure skating, a uniquely musical sport, to ignore hip hop would be a waste. I'm glad the ISU is making some effort to incorporate it. Just referencing the music alone is going to lead to interesting new ways to move on the ice. For instance, I think that turntablism (i.e. record-scratching) is the one musical instrument that provides the closest analog to skating footwork. I can easily imagine Kurt Browning's footwork from his pro years playing with that, if he hasn't tried it already. I would love to see ice dancers explore the use of edges to this percussion.
