I am beginning to think that rivalry, or ''polemic'' in Congolese music is an inborn thing. Members, may you elaborate on it's importance: it creates good albums, it causes rifts between musicians, it even causes poverty...

technically it creates  or may i say should create good albums and helps artists stay relevant,but in reality in the last years polemique has produced zero good thing,only millions of abusive comments on youtube,arrests to humiliate somebody from the other camp...only one artist truly benefits from polemic and has been using that trick for decades prior to alvbum releases,except that it ends up not just being a trick but long term enemity with the other guy
 three artists in the last 20 years really benefitted financially from polemique its jb werra and koffi who used it to get insane amounts back then (and still a bit today),ferre fally and co just take advantage of what those three had done before,to get big money to dedicate a song to somebody,or for a concert, or for sponsorship

Yes, and another primary factor which gave rise to the polemics was the fan clubs. Basically, these were conglomerations of the diehard fans who made sure their artist played at all the big concert halls. They also raised big funds for albums and plane tickets for the band - e.g Alisi Baba & Photo Joel Mbetenge (Werra) & Germain Mbili, Simon Mbongo (Koffi).

The problem with these fan clubs was that the extreme members influenced the artists to go to extremes with conflicts, working in conjunction with the spokesmen and band members. In the polemic DVD from the early 2000s, which generated lots of income for Werra, Koffi & JB, surrounded by the spokesmen and band members were the the leaders of the fan clubs.

How does polemic cause poverty?

How does polemic cause poverty?

Like Archos said, the only beneficiaries were/are JB, Werra, Koffi, and also Wemba. If you look back to some of the most vocal figures, Blaise Element for example, for all the promo/blatant attacking he's done for Werra, the only real benefit he got was mabanga and some money here and here. Nowadays in he's in and out of mental institutions and prisons in France, basically homeless.

Jordan Kusa is another vocal character that comes to mind. He was basically Koffi's Sankara back in the early 2000s in terms of being a diehard spokesman. Though he came here to the States after leaving QL, he had big financial difficulties in DC until recently. Now he has financial backing and wants to release an album.

Matebu, That's Blaise's and Jordan's fault that they haven't gotten on their feet abroad because there is way more opportunities in France and the U.S then just music (in the case of Jordan). Can't really blame the ex-bosses for that.