Hip Hop is Dead.

Hip Hop is dead. Is it really though? No. It's not gone. It's just matured. At the end of the 90's, the mainstream industry branched away from the Hip Hop you knew: but that didn't stop Rawkus Records. It didn't stop Def Jux. It's not that the culture is lost, it's that the culture has found a new home altogether: the underground. Just as a man & his family may move from one city to the next, their way of life becomes different. Their mannerisms take on new characteristics to adapt themselves to their new environment.
We can whine & complain that great music isn't being heard by the majority like it should, but homies in London is listening. People in Japan got they ears tuned in. Just because the fat pockets of corporate record labels ain't promoting genuine, pure music even beyond this genre we so care for, does not mean the culture is dead. It's previous state of existence. When has adaptation & development in life caused this much of an issue?