Without getting into the social issues being violence, gun violence, rappers getting shot etc and just focusing on his comments about the current state of hip-hop, I feel like guys like DMC may have lost touch with underground hip-hop. All the artists he seems to be complaining about are pop artists. They might be rapping (albeit poorly) but it's not really hip-hop as we know it, it's pop music. It's manufactured by a pop machine with almost no artistry from the performer whatsoever. It comes from a pop music industry culture, not hip-hop culture. It follows the tradition of manufactured bands in the same tradition as labels like Motown. For me, the continuity of quality hip-hop has never been lost. The stuff I listen to now, I love just as much as the stuff I bought in the late 80s or early 90s. I don't whinge about the quality of the rap I see on TV etc because that stuff has ALWAYS been poor. There are exceptions of course, but in my experience, the good stuff didn't just land on your lap by turning on the TV or the radio. You didn't see Big Daddy Kane or Kool G Rap videos all the time back then, you saw Snap! and Monie Love and Vanilla Ice. You had to go looking for the good records. Plus, almost all of these criticisms about the imagery and message could be (and were) applied to the music back in the day. The lavish consumerism, the drugs, the guns... it was all there. Rappers were emulating the drug dealer/pimp lifestyle back then. Hell, Run-DMC wore Adidas with no shoe strings in them, copying the way people in jail wore them (I guess they were 'felon shoes' after all).