I've listen to Kanye fairly extensively until the past couple of years. I love some of his stuff still but compare him to someone like Busta Rhymes or Chance the Rapper and it's not his raps that make him stand out but his productions.
I hear you, Kanye is not a top tier rapper to me, either, in terms of skill or flow, but here, his taunts next to Jay’s schooling do it for me. I also generally think his words are underrated because they’re coming out of the mouth of one of the more obnoxious characters in popular music. The Dissect season on My Beautiful Twisted really breaks down both the intricacies of the production and the rhymes.
For me, Kendrick, Pusha T, Earl Sweatshirt, Vince Staples, and maybe a few others are the defining rap artists of the generation, at least in terms of the kind of rap I value (not into much of the new alternative styles like cloud rap or sad rap, etc.). Kanye to me is a hybrid between rap and Pop, a great artist if not a great technical rapper or singer.
Just, as for HAM, it’s a vibe, and, especially considering the inclusion of a time-resistant Jay-Z, an ethic.