...And then aliens rewrote history and it wasn't any more?
90% of all music, in all styles, has
always been crap. There's just so much more of it around everywhere these days that you have to look a little harder to find the good stuff. Avoiding radio and TV and going looking for it in a live music scene is always the best way to start - I personally know some absolutely fantastic rappers, and I don't come from a big hip-hop city by any stretch of the imagination.