...I've grown to understand his whole "deal" a little more.
and in all fairness--
his success is due in part to the fact that he's one of a handful of current/forefront artists in Hip Hop that have been thinking of themselves as literal "artists" and their medium as an "artform" to begin with.
let alone those that are forging any sort of unique identity.

Folks run around shitting on him (which he does sometimes deserve) and then minutes later praising Tribe & De La, not realizing that --though far removed in time and era-- what he's doing is more in the vein of that than their favorite dude who make their work like an assembly line, and not...art.

as a matter of fact, if the decline of Hip Hop can be in anyway attributed to his success, it's in the sense that it highlights how boring a lot of other rappers are.
---Not boring in the sense of they don't have as kooky public antics as he does or whatever, but just in terms of how invested they are in their CRAFT, period.

aaand that being said, he is the proverbial Cheez-It in the desert.
and the praise/forced mythology is too much at times.