I wouldn't say "realest" is the right word, but he certainly had the most interesting list of antics of any rapper. Just a short list of things he did:
Got in a high speed chase and shootout with the cops
Got shot in an attempted robbery and drove himself to the hospital
Escaped from jail, went on the lamb for a couple weeks, and even performed with the Wu.
Saved a little girl from a wrecked car.
Interrupted the Grammies.
Any one of those things would have been a crazy thing for a rapper to have done. The fact that he did all of them and more is insane.
Real is not good or bad it simply is. You can be real positive, real negative, real ignorant ,etc. ODB may have been ignorant but he was real.
Contrast that to most people in the game now who are not real but are negative and/or ignorant.
When someone is real, whether it's ignorant, positive, or whatever, you'll get the whole picture, good or bad. For example ODB's antics cost him his freedom and ultimately his life. An impressionable person(much of the black youth in America) who may have looked up to ODB can look at all his legal troubles and see the whole picture. That is, there are repercussions to living that way. The problem with a lot of these rappers nowadays is that they're portraying a glamorized, fictionalized, life and because it's not real it appears to have no drawbacks to it. People don't get the whole picture and that is far more dangerous.
