In today's NY Times, there is an article on Bob Dylan, which can be found at the following url (you need to register in order to view it - registration is free):

http://www.nytimes.com/20...1DYLA.html

The relevant piece if the article is as follows:

"In the last decade Beck earned the title (of the New Bob Dylan) by jumbling together hip-hop and folk with a magic touch like the one Dylan used when he made folk electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Acknowledging the link, Dylan invited Beck to tour with him, as he did Ani Di Franco, whose structure-breaking folk-funk is equally deserving of a place in the lineage.

If that lineage were not so tied to conventional notions of the literary, perhaps the world would acknowledge two titans who reached their apex in the 1980's as the most important New Dylans. Prince is the rare artist who shares Dylan's two strongest virtuosic traits: an encyclopedic knowledge of the music that obsesses him and an urge to create so promiscuous that it makes him take chances others would reconsider. His persona is also Dylanesque: part prophet, part imp.

Then there is Madonna, whom no one would call Dylan's songwriting peer but who has the same ability to make herself as big as the historical moment she occupies. What Dylan did for a generation bent on realizing new ideals about art, personal freedom and social justice, Madonna did for one reconsidering liberation and its costs in the counterculture's wake. Such artists tap into what everyone is thinking and make it seem that they thought of it, if not first, then best. Taking command of the era that defined her, Madonna became a New Dylan, too."