Am I generally excited about hip hop, no. Here's why, The state of hip hop has been lost to this generation's obsession with age and relevancy and how the two are related in hip hop. We are no longer focused on originality and creativity, and trying to out do the last guy lyrically. But instead we celebrate the artists who may seem like the coolest to hang out with or the scariest nigga on the block. No other genre of music ever have this as an issue except hip hop. Today's younger fans feel as if hip hop should last up to thirty and at that point you are old and irrelevant. I think maybe because hip hop is the youngest genre and only genre that has changed from being based on culture and being centered around music, now is based on marketing and is centered around image. The only other genre even close to this would be pop. Yet pop was created for the very purpose of being marketable and selling an image through music. It seems as if through the popularity of hip hop we have adopted that premise as how hip hop music should operate, especially in recent years.
Unlike other genres of music that would spin off other sub-geres of that music. Hip hop has a tendancy to just blanket the entire scene for that current time as what everyone is doing. Example.
Genre: Rock & Roll
Sub Genre: Heavy Metal
Punk
Ska
Emo
etc.....
Genre: Hip Hop
Sub-Genre: ???
Hip Hop music doesn't have a sub-genre, because we only listen to what the majority or the hottest thing out is doing. If the hottest at the time is on some party shit, then all rappers is on some party and club shit. If the hottest rapper at the time is on some cocaine shit, then everyone's a drug dealer, and so on and so forth. We have lost that originality that made hip hop big in the first place, and came to a point where everyone is scared to be different, or everyone is selling the same story. The reason why the older rappers haven't left the game is because of who would be left with it.