re: Drake doesn't write his own lyrics (Update 7/29/15: RIP Meek Mill)

Isn't this about as shocking as finding out that Arnold was roided up in the 1970s?

The genre really doesn't attract folks with singular talents (or hasn't in decades - old school rules), particularly not today. Image and name recognition is 110% of the market. The lyrics are largely interchangeable, repeated and repackaged. Ditto for the beats, which are, by now, the samples of samples of sampled samples of samples. Auto-tune makes all singers sound the same, particularly the females. What little "songwriting" that is done, is primarily done by song banks and the same groupings of collobarative producers/songwriters.

This is true of most pop and modern country music as well. If there was much of a rock scene any longer, it would be true of the bread and butter acts there, as well.

It is what it is - people don't get into music to make art - maybe they never did - they do so to make money. They then do whatever it takes to make money. The difference is, back in the day, there weren't machines or an infrastructure set up specifically to disquise an absolute lack of talent (and I'm not talking about talent deficiencies, but outright lack) - Bob Dylan wrote great songs, so no one cared if he sounded like he was singing through a kazoo. Elvis could sing a Denny's menu and sell millions of copies, so the powers-that-be commissioned songs to be written for him.

But - as talent is no longer required at any phase of the operation, you get what we have now. "Talentlessness" (I may have just coined a new word - deal with it.)