You're looking at it with a modern eye, everything looks worse usually when looking back at it with a critical eye. For the time it was innovative in the rap World, especially if you were just some suburban kid whose whole exposure to rap was MTv or FunkMaster Flex. Or on the flipside, if you were a black kid who was used to the "Money, Clothes, and Hoes" era, that song and delivery from a white dude was a bit shocking.
Also that song wasn't an immediate hit, it was a real slow build.