I'm not sure if the culture you see today is this massive drop in values you make it out to be. I'm a product of Gen-Y, and when I was 11 one of my favorite songs was 'Money, Cash, Hoes'...I would listen to that until it was time to turn on the TV where Degeneration X taught me to tell people 'Suck it'. Meanwhile, my pants were hanging off my ass and when Chris Rock said there's a difference between blacks and nikkas, it instantly because a common ideology as soon as he said it because our culture took our beliefs from entertainment.
We're all in the matrix. We just have different roles within it. I can't be so sure 50 Cent is an example of 'the good ol days' over Drake. Sure, we all have our subjective musical and fashion tastes, but objectively, I don't see a difference.
At the end of the day, once you hit a certain year in your 20's (the year itself differs by the individual), you truthfully begin to realize how silly it all is, but it wasn't any less silly when you didn't know better.