He was both. (we all are, to a degree really) Your personality is the most malleable thing about you. You are always "channeling" some persona or aspect of yourself at any given time, it's just that some people are more polarized than others. (BPD, ect). The words below aren't something he wrote as an entertainer, these are some of his innermost thoughts that tell you exactly what was going on in his mind.
Pay attention to 7DT cover (seeing himself as a martyr)...you could say he was "acting" as in, when he's around people he loves or has no reason to fear or mistrust that he's a "different person" but those choices were real...and a lot of them were made with self awareness by someone who was very well versed on philosophy and metaphysics.
He understood the concept of the shadow and it's purpose and what part it plays in your psycho/spiritual anatomy. Like he said, it's not that it wasn't him, it was that it was blown up, there was an audience and even more reason to feel vulnerable and in turn needing to feel secure.
The bigger his LIGHT (capacity for good) got, the bigger shadow he needed. And his shadow in particular wasn't just reflective of him, it was of the young black male as a whole. He said in some interview that he felt like he wasn't the cure, he was the symptom. The thing that draws attention to the disease regardless of how much pain is needed to get a reaction.
I feel like his "true goal" was to embody the mental anguish that was left in the wake of the civil rights movement. Fatherlessness, drug addiction, violence, racism, corruption...he took that on..he channeled that and not because it was foreign to him but because he grew up in it the same way we did. He took it on because he was the one with the stage and the lights.