Interpreting The New Yorker

Anyone know what Sasha Frere-Jones is actually saying in his article proclaiming 2009 to be the death of hip-hop? As far as I can tell, F-J declares hip-hop dead because -

a) He doesn't like The Blueprint 3

b) New Kanye/Kid Cudi don't really rap, or they rap, but the sound is not hip-hop -

Compare it to Kanye West’s “Glow in the Dark” tour, or Kid Cudi’s breakout hit “Day ’n’ Nite,” and you will notice that this is hip-hop by virtue of rapping more than sound. The tempos and sonics of disco’s various children—techno, rave, whatever your particular neighborhood made of a four-on-the-floor thump—are slowly replacing hip-hop’s blues-based swing. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about the rudimentary digital sound of New Orleans bounce or the crusty samples of New York hip-hop: this music wants to swing and syncopate. On major commercial releases, this impulse is giving way to a European pulse, simpler and faster and more explicitly designed for clubs.

Is Kid Cudi rapping on Day 'n' Nite? Have I been mistaken about this?

c) The last time hip-hop was both "popular and weird" was, uh, all the way back to last year with Carter III

Now these rappers are getting all European on us! You can lament the decline of the form of rap popular in the early 90's but I don't know what Jay-Z's new album has to do with it. Seems like a cheap narrative ploy to try and make what would normally be a pretty meh review of a pretty meh album into signifying something only marginally related to the subject. It'd be like saying the new Oasis album has signaled the death of Brit-Pop.