What actually makes a verse quotable
Quotability is not the same as complexity. It is a set of mechanical properties, and most of them are learnable.
Culture
The wider culture — fashion, film, art, language, politics.
The regional scene is the last real filter
Before national distribution, a record had to survive its own city first. That local gatekeeping did work we have not replaced.
Crate digging is not nostalgia
Digging gets written off as backwards-looking. It is closer to the opposite: a working method for finding sounds an algorithm will never hand you.