for what its worth, I totally agree with you. subjectively he might be a good "director" of aesthetic (though i'm not personally wild about it, props to him using some jazz that other people recorded and composed for him), but his lyrics make me cringe and his "flow" as a rapper is quite frankly really boring and grating. to me its rather apparent when you compare him to rappers of the early to late 90s (regardless of the actual message).

it's a case where imo, people respect him because he's jamming social commentary and politics into his music, but i think he's not particularly good at it from what ive listened to and read. this is coming from someone who's listened to rap and as a kid liked it for a while, but quickly lost interest in the genre, so people who are going to downvote, my anus is ready.

really, i think the "best" parts of his music are the instrumental backing, which is often quiet compared to his vocals and drums. and since that stuff is the most interesting i'd suggest to anyone, just go listen to some jazz, or some sampled jazz in electronica, or some trip hop even if you really want some vocals there with that hip hop sound for something more musical.

all in all i think a lot of music these days focuses on aesthetics over substance, and while kendrick is trying to sew in substance with his lyrics, i can't say theres much musical value to "kendrick lamar" in the actual songs (ie the rapping). it feels liek a lot of post modernist stuff, where skill and talent required for the craft were eliminated as requirements for respect because, in the case of music, its easy to make a decent sounding thing real fast with little effort now. It's kind of strange to me how fixated everyone gets on production (haha i know, we're in /r/audioengineering). it's like having a tradition of painters who paint beautiful pieces of art on a canvas, and then over a period of 10 years everyone decided that it was more important to have a nice color of paint on the wall and align their furniture just right for dat aesthetic.

i also entirely agree with snoop dogg on rap "flow" these days: https://youtu.be/g0OdmRtuQew?t=11s all rap vocals have going for them are the rhythm and lyrics, so when you take the interesting rhythm changes out... you don't have a lot left.