As an emcee, I can tell you for sure that it isn't dead. Commercially, yes it is, but the movement that was the underground that produced some of the best acts music has ever seen. From your buck 65, to your amazingly weird talents from the US, like your Dose One. In the early '0's we had this world of independently produced and packaged music coming from outside of the world of mainstream that looked like it could any way. It eventually sometime in the last five to several years began to evolve into something that barely resembled hip hop at all. Speaking of the underground and being a performer for the last 15 years or so, the newer living version of that world is now something that looks a bit like experimental poetry, and the noise movement. This is okay, because music evolves, and with that evolution comes new genres and listeners.
But in all intents and purposes, yes what we remember of 'HIP HOP' has vanished rightly from the world. Does it still permit some lonesome survivors? Yes of course. There are some that refuse to stop with the outdated kick snare formula that made it popular in the last 20 to 30 years. But those rogue elements are looked at as simply behind the times. All of this just means that, just because the movement is dead, it by no means singnifies that new movements won't and can't take their place. And they have. It's not sad. It is just new and interesting. Let it go, I say, and that's coming from the perspective of an emcee that loved the tradition and performed this style for many years. It's all good though.