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Originally Posted by http://rateyourmusic.com/list/Cronus/jazz_essentials
The key element of Jazz is the Improvisation. If there's no improvisation at all then it's not jazz. The compositional part may vary from genre to genre, the improvisations may or may not have any restrains or rules, the instruments may vary from the acoustic conventionals (piano, sax, trumpet, drums, bass) to electronic or even home-made instruments; the music can be melodic or non-melodic; but of all the subgenres/styles of Jazz the only thing in common on all of them is that they all have the improvisation as their core of their music (although not all improvised music is necessary jazz).
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Jazz is essentially the godfather of hip hop in a lot of stylistic ways, so I think the same thing can be applied. A lot of great aspects of hip-hop come right off of the top of the artist's head: using their immediate imagination to create something spontaneous and surprising. That's a lot like an improvised jazz solo, to me.
So I think of free-styling as necessary, though the structured, written approach is obviously just as important to actually being able to enjoy the music. Whether one outweighs the other, depends on the artist.