There are a few exceptions (I love the black album and blueprint 2 from Jay-Z) Actually that's about it...Your right, this new something that people refer to as rap is a strained perversion of POP music. Souless, lessonless, and storyless. Every song has a reference to a club, a drink, a car, and some girls ass. Nothing wrong with that, except when every single song references those same things OVER and OVER and OVER. Kayne West has some decent music, but it strikes me as something other than rap or hip hop. But that is the last glimmer of any expression in modern "hip hop or rap".
This really started when the "dirty south" got too big too quickly, and club music and rap became one. Slow drawn out beats with some moron slurring stupidly and repetitively over it does not work for me I suppose. I like a nicer, crisper sound that focuses around the message or vocal in the song, and less around the sound of it. Black Star, Gangstarr, Wu-Tang shit like that. I can't get enough of that. Hard to think that most of that music is like 15 years old now.
Yall do know most rap is not music. especially if it was puked out after the millennium, but you could say the same thing about all the so called "music" that was puked out after the millennium. 2pac and others like him put heart into their music. Now almost everybody sounds the same.