His first two albums, have storytelling, concious, and other stuff besides battle rhymes. He is an elite talent. He may not be the greatest SONGWRITER, but he did everything else between above average to god tier.
You bring up the "make rappers afraid" deal, but Nas declined to be on Desperados after Canibus destroyed it. Some say he was on there and took his verse off. Pun was one of the handful of people NOT afraid to rap with him. He had the biggest hype in the game in 97, had Wyclef coming off selling a ridiculous amount of records pushing and producing him, where are the big name features on his two major label albums?