Associations....

I often say I have a handful of friends...it's so I don't lose my hair from stress.

When I left Morgan and was performing with my group we could easily be hanging around with 20 people in someones house, apartment, etc. Some people performed, some produced, some just hung out. We used to do our thing all in the Charles Village area of Bmore. There was pretty much a balanced male/female ratio, so of course there was some sex involved. But some of the most fun things involved beef. Say all the ladies we know are going out to a spot...we wouldn't want to go. So the guys are sitting around chilling and in comes the phone call,"________ got into it with some dude and we need ya'll to come down here." I never could figure out why it would always be a beef with a bunch of dudes. When we went out we never had beef. No matter how deep we were, we never had beef. These ladies would get into something everytime they went out and we would be summoned for the assist. I hate things like this, there is nothing worse than having to fight when you weren't initally part of the beef...especially if you were 10 minutes before just chilling somewhere. As a matter of fact I no one has tried to beef with me personally since High School. Every beef I've been involved in since has centered around someone else. I know part of my problem has been that I get involved in stupid shyt. I often tell my clients it's usually that "extra word" that starts the beef. You know, people are going back and forth and no one can let it go so even after the main complaint is over they just keep saying something. Straw that broke the Camel's back. I can think of close to 7 times in a period of a year where we had to go get involved in something. Personally I have certain rules around beef. After choosing whether or not it's a worthwhile beef I challenge, "Here I am right now" type of deal. I don't do that next time I see you garbage. If we're gonna get into it's right now or we let it go. I don't respond well to threats either. If you say I'm going to the car or I'm going outside, I'd rather just tag you right there and get it on. I was never the person that started anything, but I do have issues with "bully" type situtions. I break. I don't like situations to drag out. I want to get it over with. That being said, I don't like to get into beef over another persons nonsense. Especially when that person begins to rely on you to get them out of the bad end of a situation. Furthering this problem I know one of these sistas would always get into with someone when she drank. Even if we were chilling amongst friends. This is one of those cats who should be forbidden to drink. Considering she is amongst this group always pissed me off to have to go get into a beef when I didn't know how it started. To make matters worse around this time alot of joints were getting shut down over shootings. So here we are chilling inside having some drinks and freestyling and we get a call to come down to such and such club cause cat's is beefing. Just the way to end your evening. Then I remember we actually got into a beef (which was squashed without a punch being thrown) and the same "horrible drunk" said that their problems were a result of....get this..."Our bad karma coming back on them." To this day me and my man laugh over that. "Karma doesn't work like that sweetie." As a matter of fact me and this same cat have left a record 6 places right before story worthy beefs broke out. I mean chairs being thrown movie type beefs. Now here we were having to get in shyt regularly because of others. As gallant as I may be...when I have the feeling a sista may be to blame for the beef, a brother gets hesitant to be involved. Later my man almost got into a beef because (unbeknownst to us) some of these sistas were stripping at a local club. It bothered him (he is now a Sangoma Priest) more than a bit to have some dude approach him about "getting their girls together"...I recognize them and I see how you do he said. He's all ready to defend them and get out on this dude...only to find out we didn't know what was up. So that story finally broke amongst the crew. Around this time I began to realize that I was associating myself with alot of people I didn't really know at all. I don't randomly judge or point fingers, but too much beef was going down around these situations. At this point people started to drift apart...it was that time. College, work and other things were consuming our time. We began to break down into our seperate groups and do our thing. I have since not associated so closely with such a large group of people. I don't have those types of stories to tell anymore either. We did have alot of good times go down, traveling and performing, but we had just as much drama associated with it. I can't say I really regret it, but I don't think I'll roll quite that deep again.