I just wanna make a quick post to talk about something that's been a small peeve of mine for a while.

In some circles there's been a sentiment that if you want to have any sort of legacy or respect in the madness community then you need to make a solo project. To some extent it's true, you'll obviously gain more recognition from making a project entirely by yourself. But where I think that stops being the right way to think is when people act like

your overall work or reputation is devalued if you only take part in collaborative projects. (Be it as the host or as a member.)

There is no shame in not wanting to make a huge time investment into something you're only doing as a hobby. We all have work, families and ambitions to take care of outside of madness content and collabs are a great way to both bring people together, refine your skills and get larger projects out the door without sacrificing a crazy amount of time that you might not even have to spare in the first place.

Creative vision is important too and there is no denying that solo projects are much better for staying true to one. But that's why direction is important. A project that stays true to the organizer's vision can be realized so long as it's directed and managed closely. This is pretty common knowledge but for whatever reason it seemed to escape people in some parts of the Madness community.

It's likely because the "You HAVE to make EVERYTHING by yourself!" mentality comes from a time when the only collabs being put out were usually test or clip collabs with no story or cohesion to be found outside of themes or gimmicks. But ever since Madness: JAILBREAK and Whitehank 2 showed up on the scene a few years back, story driven or connected collabs have become the norm. So the aforementioned "solos only" sentiment is no longer accurate.

In conclusion:

Solo projects are great and you deserve more praise for putting one out, but collabs are valuable in their own way.

The reality is: working on something for that long just isn't fun or realistically manageable for a lot of people.

Nobody should be shamed for only wanting to participate in collabs or co-op projects.

Or at least that's my personal opinion.

I don't mean for this to come off as a negative post or anything either. I just want to put out something I've been thinking about.