I see what you're saying man, and my past self agrees with it. But like I said in another thread, I can't go fighting the next 40 years expecting cats to follow rules. That's fighting time at this point because the entertainment industry is always targeting teenagers to ~23 year old mainly, and I'm not in that demographic anymore. It's also trying to control how people think and we can't do that.
But just a breakdown, here were the real rules of rap:
-Flow matters. Breath control was a part of that and made flows even more special. There's no such thing as breath control with punch-ins and nearly every rapper uses them when they record. We can't measure anyone's flow who uses punch-ins.
-writtens were never freestyles. Those thousands of "freestyles" floating around today need to be shut down. Off the top = freestyling. That's how it was.
-Can't be fake on record. Say who you are, no lying. shyt ain't real. You'd be checked for your words, and that opinion mattered.
-No singing.
-no biting. Cut all that "homage" shyt. No biting.
Those were the rules, but bending them was eventually "tolerated" before they got obliterated straight up. You keep letting small shyt slide, and this is the result. But we're all guilty because shyt sounds hot.
With that trend continuing it was only a matter of time that ghost writing became accepted in the mainstream.