And if you said that to Mastodon they would probably kick your ass
Anyway, here is where I'm going with this. I'm probably the oldest, if not one of the oldest members of this forum. Which means that the glory years of hip-hop that you and your peers speak of, I lived and enjoyed life during that era. That 2nd generation of hip hop when everything just exploded from 83-87. I was 14 when that first happened, and all my friends except for one were white. We were a bunch of white kids who became enamored with the music, the clothes, the style, the dancing, everything that was hip hop.
Yes, we all had Ghetto Blasters that took up anywhere from 8 to 12 D batteries to last one day.
Yes, we would all go to Skippy White's on North Main Street in Providence, RI to get our hands on BDP's "The Bridge is Over, extended version" on 12" discs, or we would all tune into 95.5 WBRU "The Black Experience in Sound" on Sundays at the park or the beach, complete with 2-3 blank TDK or Maxell 90-minute cassettes and just hit Record and let it go all day.
Yes, we all had custom made T-shirts and black and red kangol outfits for the S.R.C. (The Sonic Rocking Crew) and had our pieces of spray painted cardboard our kitchen linoleum tile that we would break dance on.
Those were some of the best days of my life, and that music always brings me back.
But if I had the train of thought that everything else after it just sucks, then I would have stopped listening to new Hip-Hop in the early 90's. Just like I would have stopped listening to anything after 1970, when the Beatles, the one group who has influenced EVERYONE in music, stopped making records. Just as I would have turned off anything after 1975- 1976, when the last great albums by 4 of my favorite bands, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, and The Who were released.
Hey man look. IF there is anyone here who would have a justifiable beef with the direction that hip-hop has taken, it would be me

. But I'm good with it though, because there are always going to be those just under the radar that give me the belief that the genre, in its truest form, isn't going anywhere. And no, they will NEVER be as good as the legends you mentioned earlier. Doesn't mean they are not good though, in their own way.