Let’s keep it real: all of us would choose Michael Jordan over Dickey Simpkins any day of the week. We’d always choose Kobe Bryant over Harold Miner, Lew Alcindor over Michael Olowokandi, Brett Favre over Kelly Holcomb or Randy Moss over that guy who went by “He Hate Me” in the XFL. Plain and simple, we’re always going to have our own respective favorites, each of which varies between the individual.

My favorite Wu-Tang song of all time is Raekwon’s “Incarcerated Scarfaces” from my favorite Wu album, Only Built For Cuban Linx... While I’m sure there are a few others who feel the same way, I’m well aware that there are many others who have their own seminal Wu-Tang song and album. Does that make things problematic for the ones we don’t choose? It’s only to their egos, which seems to get frailer by the day. In this rapster world particularly, pride (as much as money, drugs and groupies) can often lead to the downfall of crews. Well, that and anybody who is affiliated with Wyclef Jean. I mean, damn: Lauryn has been on a decade-long road to redemption, that one guy from City High ended up on an episode of Intervention, John Forte got caught with all kinds of liquid crack, and Pras and the Product G&B have gone missing in action.

But I’m straying from my point.

Earlier today here at the house of Harris, T3 of Slum Village – or whatever’s left of that team nowadays – waxed poetics on how we, the fans, are the cause to the split of rap groups when we, the fans, tend to gravitate toward one particular member more than the others. I almost didn’t believe he said that in the quote provided by the email blast my benefactors so graciously load my inbox with every week, like when people send “remixes” of songs knowing damn well they weren’t even in the same studio much less the same zip code as the artist whose song they’re “remixing.” But in the video T3 comes across rather pickle-faced (you know: green, sweet and salty) when stating that instead of appreciating the entire rap group as a whole, fans would rather single out one member to latch on to.

I really wish artists would have more media training sometimes.

Regardless of the artist we pick in a group, fans are not, should not and will never be responsible for the disintegration of a group whose members are practically like brothers, and suffice to say T3 looked... well... rather bitchmade trying to make rapster fans the scapegoat to his group’s problems, not the changes in creative direction, unfortunate deaths, beaf and other such turmoil that’s afflicted Slum Village like a hip hop bubonic plague of sorts. Rather than pointing the finger the second shit hits the fan, real groups will trudge through the muck and still come out fine. I mean damn, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are still around and they’ve done lord knows what kind of shit in their careers. If more rapsters followed their lead... absolutely nothing would change in rap. We can all dream, however.

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