i listen to mf doom regularly, aesop rock, el p, murs, etc etc the list goes on, hip hop is not dead to me, it just transitioned... heard a decent mainstream track when i was in NYC jay electronika - exhibit c... its on youtube, hottest mainstream i heard in a minute... el p is working on his next album right now, and sage francis is about to do a show in my area in a couple months... ive been able to kick it/talk to most people i listen to, which is one of the things i like most... got to be on stage for most of SSS's sets, which was a pretty unique experience... kinda waitin for mf doom to come through, heard there was some suspicion of lip syncing or him using a body double or some shit during rock the bells a few years back... what do they expect from a masked villian though
edited to add:
btw aesop rock solely produced the latest installment from felt and appears regularly on it, though i only gave a few tracks a quick listen... ive been pretty heavy into def jux, rhymesayers, anticon, and other smaller independent labels since around 99/00 since i felt there was a large void left in hip hop in the marginally commercial market, some due to death's, beef, over-commercialization, watering down of the product for a mainstream audience... kinda felt like the early 90s boom lead to the raping of an artistic genre, and now we have most tracks on the radio are autotune/vocoder, and sound like shit...
p.s. lil wayne is wack as fuck... i respect his paid dues, hard work, and down to earth attitude, but i just cant feel that shit...