It's fair to call him a genius. Not a fan of his - though I was when he first came out and was more of a producer and initially off-the-radar artist - but, to be fair, his following and critical acclaim speaks for itself. If he did not produce an exceptional product for many years, then the general population would necessarily have horrible taste... seems like pretty good odds to safely bet he's good at what he does.
Huge fan of 90s rap, likely as a product of age, culture, the superiority of 90s rap, etc. So everything that has come since Tupac, for example, I can fairly easily brush off as "crap." But to dismiss his talents based upon personal preferences would be silly, which seems to be the discussion unraveling here.
One can certainly argue that a lot of his success came from his creating a polarizing persona. That'd argument could carry weight, for sure, in that a lot of people make careers off of that. But he definitely did not start off his career that way, at least not to the general public, and I doubt he would've enjoyed the success he has had based entirely upon PR stunts.
I do think he's a clown, fwiw. And I would like to see him run for president solely because of that, too.