I can only speak for myself but I always cared about gunning to be the best lyricist. The longer I rapped though I gradually also cared about songwriting, musicality, hook-writing, etc. A lot of the dudes being trashed in this thread simply care more about writing a catchy song than other things. Some of them can write a catchy song AND deliver it soulfully, they might not be concerned with having the sharpest pen though.
While the game's definitely been dumbed down lyrically-speaking, there's levels to it. There's a lot of skill involved in being able to deliver a message as efficiently, evocatively and directly as possible, and the x factor comes from being able to do all that in a creative/unique way.
Also, I can't help but feeling like a lot of the talk about the "lack of lyricism" in some respect boils down to that a lot of listeners literally do not understand a lot of what they're listening to. Lyricism in the context of this forum for example is often conflated with writing more prosaically despite the fact that a lot of the time these prosaic rappers are literally rapping about the same shyt in the same (or even less) amount of depth as rappers who do not stick to prosaic conventions.
Good songwriting is a significant aspect of lyricism... If you deliver your message ineffectively and/or generically I don't necessarily care to hear it at all regardless of the lyrics being technically proficient on paper. If you're flipping prosaic conventions in a unique way then that's a different story, wordsmiths are able to bend words in new ways and even bend generic concepts in new ways.
One example of a rapper I consider to be lyrical but not in a prosaic sort of way is E-40. In his prime he was able to take conventional ideas and flip the script:
The subtext in this song makes a very strong statement about people with fukked up priorities who value themselves based on how other people think of them instead of valuing their own goals. A lot of backpack rappers in the 90s tackled this subject all the time (I don't care about gold chains and fancy cars lalalalala) to the point of making it a stereotypical backpack rap trope, but very few conveyed the message as effectively, evocatively and directly as 40 did on that song imo.
