in perspective you can say that authenticity really means nothing as long as the quality of the music is decent..
but i feel in order to the artist to truly connect with his audience, he has o come from a place of relevance to the material he's rapping about or it comes off as fake and phoney, and while there will be some who fucks with that.. those who consider themselves pursuit will always consider those artist fraudulent and never worthy of the "greatest" crowns...
Lets put it this way if we knew N.W.A really wasn't street they wouldn't have been nearly as popular as they were.