What Is Happening To Hip Hop?

Over Spring Break, I found myself watching a late night television show on VH1 about Hip Hop, and what it has become. Turning to it about a quarter of the way through the show, I watched as they talked about the late Tupac and Biggie Smalls, and all of the East Coast-West Coast nonsense that took place in the early to mid nineties. During this time, I was still really young so anything music related besides the Barney song "I love you, you love me," did not exactly fascinate me. I later realized that these two men played a huge roll in the lives of rappers today such as Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, T.I., Plies, and many more. I'm not exactly a huge rap fan, but the show held my interest because it showed many clips of these two individuals and how their lives and deaths impacted the hip-hop community. In my opinion, these were two very talented individuals who lost their life way too early, because of a bunch of stuff that could have been prevented. East Coast-West Coast, who cares where you live or where you were born. Anyway, I was writing this because watching this show also made me realize the mess that they call rap music today is just that "mess." I watch as many of my peers rap and say how they are going to make it, because they look at people such as Soulja Boy, and feel that if he can do it, then they can do it. I laugh because as much as I hate to say it, Soulja Boy is far from a real rapper, yet I find myself watching his videos and singing along to his songs. Overall, I am wondering what has happened to today's rap music. Sad to say, but did rap actually die along with Tupac and Biggie. Come on..."do the stanky leg,"...that has to be the worst song ever, yet it's making it to the top of the charts. Can those guys actually make an entire CD that someone would listen to fully through?