Discussion of 'hype', 'media hype', whether someone is 'overrated' or not is always going to be to an extent a fool's errand, as we all know that hype is simply what the media does.

Another reason that it's a blind alley because we all have our heroes and do so love to put them in some kind of classifiable order. But that, unlike the banal brute fact of media hype, does at least give all us music geeks a chance to wax lyrical about our faves and not-so-faves. Personally, I don't like Richard Thompson, Paul Simon or Paco de Lucia at all, and only like the odd song here or there by Ralph McTell and Steve Tilston (the former more than the latter). John Martyn I always found quite irritating, apart from his early stuff – probably because it sounds a bit like Nick Drake (and/or Bert Jansch).

Hey, we all have different ears and different aesthetics. So I bristle at the suggestion that, given a couple more years, he could have produced something of the calibre of Digence, Tilston, McTell or Martyn. I wouldn't swap the 30 short minutes of Pink Moon for the entire combined discographies of them. For me, Drake was a long way from being just one among many talented fingerpickers, (albeit only on two albums: Pink Moon and the demos comp Family Tree).