I think he ENDED UP as a not good rapper, but his work up to and including Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version is brilliant. (He had some missteps for sure, Fantasy was god awful.)

Here's the thing: HE WAS FUNNY.

That goes a long way for me.

And in a literary sense he was a *great* unreliable narrator.

You couldn't tell what was true, was was made up, and what was said in a non-sequitur way. And a lyric that followed a line could change the meaning of both lyrics on the fly.

This review (from Wikipedia) say what's great about ODB until 1995.

Melody Maker (4/22/95, p. 35) - "...an hour of cruel hard and frighteningly funny hip hop; the perfect companion piece to Wu-Tang's 36 Chambers...the songs are driven by a vicious, unstable urgency."