auto-tune is killing hip hop  

Autotune is by a wide margin, the worst effect ever invented. Not only does it sound stupid..if you can't sing,it just makes you sound even worse. Antares puts out some good effects, I love their mic modeling software, their room acoustics modeling is the best and I like some of the other general vocal processing software and hardware units they put out. But I can't imagine what they were thinking when they put out autotune.
*note, I can't stand hip-hop, rap, or any of those other urban genres of music, I was glad autotune never really took off in rock like it did in some of the more urban music.

I do agree that auto-tun completely dominates mainstream music. But in hiphop, I rarely hear it. Well I am a music producer and engineer so I have the ear for that. Most auto-tunes are used in pop music and seldom in hiphop since in rap songs, what matters is the meaning of the lyrics and not really the quality of the vocals. So if you would listen to another hiphop track, have an understanding of the lyrics more than the vocal processing since it's not much important.

Some people don't know the real meaning of auto-tune. Generically, people perceive auto tune as a vocal affect added to make the voice sound a bit nicer than the raw voice. But in reality, auto-tune is actually a plug-in that could be used in instruments as well. It's called auto-tune for a reason. It corrects the pitch so that when people would listen to it, they wouldn't be awkward with it. Real talent doesn't use auto-tune, but those are artists who never made it in the music scene because as hard to admit it, listeners want to hear more embellishments in music. For pop songs, it's basically the technicalities that matter, be it the beat the rhythm. But for songs such as indie and hiphop, the lyrics should be the main concentration and not the post-processing.