Warning: Derail and Rant
Maaaaan, rap has no substance anymore. The rap game became so profitable that cats are getting in, repeating the same formula to make a couple of quick bucks. Rap used to actually tell a story, it was more than that PMW shit. Where in the past, rap was used as an avenue to explain the what it means to be young and black in America.
Rap can be used to enlighten black youth:
or, it can be very dangerous and used as a tool to further mentally enslave our impressionable youth:
(See: Lyrics of 99% of popular rap artists today)
Rap is a perfect example of how slavery still affects blacks in babylon. First, we were robbed us of our music, religion, language, ancestry, our culture. Next, it beat us down physically and mentally... told us we didn't deserve to eat in the same restaurants, that our buttcheeks weren't good enough to share a toilet with theirs. Next, and fairly recently, black leaders (Malcolm, Martin, Huey, Stokely, Bobby, Angela) were silenced through imprisonment or death. Today, with no real culture to identify with and no strong leaders, our youth accept the messages portrayed through babylon media as being who they are. Nowadays, rap tells us that what we should strive to achieve is money, cars and to degrade your brother who is perceived as being lesser than you and your sister.
All this to say that modern rap is deleterious, it has evolved from an effective story telling mechanism to a tool for brainwashing. There is very little positive to gain from rap music. It's commonly the same story to a new beat.