Never heard of the guy,but it's poor logic.

Hip Hop was a broke folk genre by definition-coming from the streets and poor neighborhoods... Also with the drug epidemic of the day it wasn't possible for many to lift themselves out of the gutter, also hiphop,as a new artform, would change so rapidly, I'm sure many felt out of place. Just look at Grandmaster Flash and in his book how there is many years of his life where he was basically doing nothing, but was able to rebuild his career and is a very recognizable name again.

Also, lots of those early artists only had a few singles, might not have even had an LP and they certainly weren't on any major labels yet. Plus, they would get poor contracts, if they got one at all.

Since the 90s and especially the last 20 years you have an excessive amount of actors and rich kids cosplaying as street gangsters,as the genre has basically been hijacked by commercial interests. What happened to my baby?