Why does today's rap suck?

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Now, I usually listen to rock/metal, but my next favorite genre would be rap. But WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?!? When rap was good (with rappers like Tupac, NWA, Public Enemy, Eminem, Onyx, etc...), it was all about the flows, life stories, and jokes that actually made you laugh. Nowadays, all you need is a simple, catchy beat, your voice autotuned to s**t, and stupid lyrics about b*****s, drugs, and money. I'm not saying ALL new rappers suck (I do like Hopsin and Dizzy Wright), I'm just talking about the commercial BS

I blame technology. 20 years ago people making rap music had to know how to DJ and rap, but now they just need to cut and paste with a computer mouse. Also marketing. Rap has been decoded and marketed to hell and back, to the point of market saturation and beyond.

Well I myself am still very much a metalhead...though I like a lot of rock that would not be considered metal. I have heard rap I like..but not the really popular stuff, seems that is where a lot of the downfall comes from. But I don't think the style itself is a bad thing...but then there is a lot of popular kind of rock and general mainstream popular music is not something i really tend to enjoy.

The commercial stuff of any genre for the most part seems to suck.

Because today's rap is all based off technology with little art or inspiration. It's just cut and paste with a beat, the beat isn't produced by the rapper usually, the lyrics often aren't even written by the rapper. And the "beat" is usually copied off someone else anyways.

Today's rappers can just pay someone to do everything for them, they're just a personality really. Underground and old school rappers didn't have the resources or money, they just had their music and their friends, and nothing else. They had a lot to lose, and a lot to rap about, and their music was a lot better as a result.

Though I don't listen to modern hip-hop or rap (I've always had an affinity for the golden age of hip-hop, though), no genre ever "sucks now". We tend to generalize based on what gets the most mainstream exposure: today's commercial rap doesn't hold a candle to the golden era, but the same can be said of nearly any genre. Dive below the surface and you'll find countless independent and underground artists of great value.

Because it's trying to be pop, this is also why todays pop sucks. Pop is supposed to stupid, but superficially pretty. Rap meanwhile is ugly, because it's supposed to be. It's essentially the black community's version of punk rock; ugly, angry, stripped-down music made to protest social injustice. I think pop punk works slightly better than pop rap because unlike rap punk still uses conventional musical structures, but rap was something completely new. The end result is a whorish abomination being marketed as pretty, but that just makes it even uglier.