To ur point, yeah it's true & it's common sense. But, that has been going on for decades in the entertainment business. I mean why do people get so angry at the whole Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie & Jennifer Aniston thing? People wanna live vicarously through entertainers because they believe they have what we in society deem as most attractive (money/success, power (somewhat), fame, attention, girls/men etc). We live in a society where stauts is important to people, or at least to most people.
As far as broke/poor people supporting it the most? That's a irony that's also been around forever. It's the same irony of where there's most troubles is usually where people are most religious. It's just that people want something else to believe in to forget about their own circumstances & troubles. So that's why people wanna be like rapper ____ or artists ____ or actor/actress ____ or athlete ____. If you notice, all of them have access to what i mentioned before (money/success, fame etc).
So when people say that Hip-hop doesn't have a huge influence - and a negative one at that - they're wrong. Always been wrong about that. It has a huge negative influence. People won't admit it tho & keep it 100.