 Along with Blue Lines , Maxinquaye was hailed by journalists as the pivotal release in what they were calling " trip hop " music ; Jon Pareles , the chief critic at The New York Times , called it the genre 's " first album @-@ length masterpiece " . Tricky disliked the term , saying " I was supposed to have invented trip hop , and I will fucking deny having anything to do with it " . In a retrospective review for Stylus Magazine , Hebert argued that " there 's too much here to be sequestered to any genre , let alone that one ... Calling Tricky ' trip @-@ hop ' is a bit like calling Prince ' pop ' . It 's partially accurate , but the music is so much better than that . " Jason Draper from Record Collector dubbed it " the British postmodern album of the 90s " , and AllMusic senior editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine said it remained " a bracing sonic adventure that gains richness and resonance with each listen " because of the songs ' imaginative structures and exceptional use of " noise and experimental music " . In The Village Voice , Christgau believed its significance lied in an aesthetic of cool derived from the blues and African @-@ American culture , which valued a self @-@ possessed resolve in the face of oppression : 
