in the case of Tragedy and Nature, they would have been more successful if not for the record business politics. I still have no idea what really happened between Nas and Nature and they both are so vague about it which is corny. Trag album Against All Odds was a personal classic but that shyt got shelved, the same way Rawkus shelved and redid the Giancana Story. Then Trag basically was the driving force behind CNN classic album and some shady shyt went on with that which basically caused NORE to break out on his own. Nature album was shelved for a while too...just like AZ due to the Firm affiliation. The Firm was a decent album but it wasnt cohesive. By the time Nature album came out, most of those songs were a couple years old and Nas wasnt fukkin with him.
QB just didnt move as a unit. It pretty much was everyone watching Nas and he wasnt fukkin with none of these dudes at a certain point in time. He had beef with mostly all of them if even only slightly. He wasnt fukkin with Mega, Trag, or P (yeah I know he from Hempstead but he repped QB), and ended up falling out with Nature. Also keep in mind Capone was down with MOBB in the early days and he really was supposed to be a solo artist, then when he linked with CNN he was supposed to be the star and he went to jail and missed half the first album and wasnt there to do a follow up album.
If you look at successful cliques, not just NY but in the South, the West, and even the Midwest.....they had something QB didnt have, that was a lead producer/production team. Trackmasters does not count.