Lawyers are best at this word. That is what they do for a living. They have the keen ability to see through anything. The major problem with correlation is assumptions.

Correlation:
cor·re·la·tion ( P ) Pronunciation Key (kôr-lshn, kr-)
n.
A causal, complementary, parallel, or reciprocal relationship, especially a structural, functional, or qualitative correspondence between two comparable entities: a correlation between drug abuse and crime.
Statistics. The simultaneous change in value of two numerically valued random variables: the positive correlation between cigarette smoking and the incidence of lung cancer; the negative correlation between age and normal vision.
An act of correlating or the condition of being correlated.

That is the definition, here is the assumption. If you eat an apple a day, then you can keep the doctor away. That is not neccessarily true. How does this relate to hip-hop.

XXL magazine has redesigned their site using wordpress. Very nice layout, and had a two part interview with Rakim (Greatest Emcee of all-time, fuck biggie smalls). The following was said:

Are you a Dipset fan?
No doubt. I like the Diplomats’ swagger, man. Juelz, Cam’ron, Jim Jones—they bring a lot of swagger back to the game. New York needs somebody right now to hold New York down.

So when will there be a Rakim/Diplomats collaboration?
Probably soon, man. They one of the cats in the game that I got a lot of respect for, music respect and street respect as well. And when I do do collabos, it’s gotta be respect. I’m not doing it because they sell records or just because they own a certain part of the market. I call ’em “smart collabos” because at the end of the day they makes sense. I don’t want people do be like, Why did Ra do a joint with this dude? I’m just trying to be focused. It’s 2006 and a lot of things have changed. A lot of different producers is bringing different things to the table and it’s that time. I’m solo. Everything should fall into place. I’m not going to spread the album too thin as far as different sounds. You gotta have that chemistry on the record. If I can make a classic album, then I did my job.

So the correlation is the follwing. Dipset is wack, rakim making a track with them makes him wack. To place in proper content, rakim would say the following:

I like the more conscious levels of hip-hop that bring awareness. I’m trying to get out of the stereotype that they put us in. Everybody don’t have to rap about selling drugs, everybody ain’t gotta rap about guns. A lot of people seen it, a lot of people been through it, but [if] you saturate the game with it, it gets to the point where that’s all there is. I’m that other dude; I want to rap about something else, I want to say something else. And at the end of the day, the ’hood is going to embrace it. That’s who I am. But I don’t have to speak on negativity. If I got 15 records on my album, all 15 of them don’t have to be about the ghetto miseries.

So if rakim does a collaboration with dipset, he will not sell his integrity. So it can either be a interesting song, with a mix of styles, or just one big mess. However it does not mean rakim or dipset is wack. There is an underlying repsect with each other.