First of all, nice insight and good job highlighting the evolution of the genre! A healthy tip-of-the-hat to you fair lady.

You make some excellent points. For me, I've come to realize I don't understand anything about fashion, image crafting or the general aesthetics of how a person visually expresses them self. This being the case, I personally don't applaud or scowl at anyone's fashionable expressions...I sort of correlate fashion to (1) rings on a tree - fashion helps me peg/reference eras, and (2) categorization - fashion choices help a person to visually place them inside their chosen social category. So I'm a moron in sussing out the meaning behind the fashion choices.

So, when critiquing, my focus is mostly on the linguistic/lyrical expression coming from Lil Pump (et al). I struggle to see anything other than blunt nihilism/materialism, and (perhaps most importantly) these ideas being clearly directed to the under 18 crowd (let's save a discussion for what age delineates a child from an adult for a later date ;) At least drill (chief keef...), though violent, bleak and young came from the sense of despair present on the streets of southside chicago (giving voice to those screwed by a corrupt govt, cycles of endemic poverty, etc). Stitches is another example of the incredibly un-nuanced violence, however his music actually seemed to be promoted upwards (geared toward a 20 something audience).

But maybe you nail it with "What I feel is really going on here is this-- the old school isn't a big fan of stupidity. Generation X is just cynical overall, and really intelligence snobs." - like if there isn't a bigger message/skill set on display, then what is produced is crap...could be.

So I'm 40 as well, and I def remember the days of (party, money, power, hoes, drugs, cars, jewelry, crime). I remember being 14 years old living (reference here to my mention of 18 above) in my bullshit suburban white-ass safety-shell and listening to NWA. Pretty bleak, violent, misogynistic, etc, but, it came out of the harsh realities blacks in LA were dealing with - things I knew nothing about. It prompted me to learn about police violence, social inequality, racism and the joys of smoking weed :) My point is that there was a deep social context behind the shocking lyrics/imagery.

Or maybe there IS real expression going on here....maybe the utter lack of accountability for anything in our society (banks are criminal enterprises, politicians are brazenly corrupt nowadays, media/corps/institutions broadly are fraudulent and corrupt, and all of these is easily learned about on a minute to minute basis by way of constant connectivity) is causing an expressive backlash. Perhaps the youngest among us (who are now just old enough to have a broad reaching voice) are acting out on this reality, expressing bleak thoughts/ideas for a bleak time.

But, on a lighter note, it is fascinating to look backwards at yourself through the lens of modern hip hop. For me, good memories of working hard (scrubbing dishes and cooking) to buy 2000 watts of phoenix gold amps and 15" Kickers to put inside my black-tinted Acura Integra in order to drive around in the suburbs (my 9mm replicate BB gun under my seat) mean muggin' the neighbors as they manicured their lawns on a sunday afternoon, drinking their stupid fucking juice without a drop of gin in the mothafucka. I was pretty gangsta.

Again, thanks for your comment, it definitely got me brains a churnin'.