Saigon interview "if this don't work for me i might fuck around and quit rapping"

[Tommy-Gun]

11/12/2006

The “Come On Baby (Remix)” is finally out. How happy are you that it’s out?

I feel good. I just hope it gets the support it deserves. If this don’t work for me, I might fuck around and quit rapping altogether There’s nothing more I can do as an artist to get the support I need. I got on a hit TV show. I fucking got on the cover of XXL. I put out numerous dope, classic songs. I’ve been the most anticipated for four years straight, sold 75,000 of Warning Shots and damn-near toured the whole world. I did everything that I think an artist can do before somebody comes and picks up the slack. I did all of this pretty much without the actual record company. I got a song with Jay-Z, the biggest rap artist in the world. What else can I do?

You must be happy with the feedback you’re getting for the “Come On Baby (Remix).”


I don’t have a problem getting good feedback. The problem has never been the music. I don’t have a song on HipHopGame that’s not a 4.5. That’s not a problem. The problem is getting the music out to the people.

Who do you mean by “the people,” because you have a very strong hip-hop fanbase?

The masses. The masses are not hip-hop fans. If they hear my music, I’m sure they’re going to like it. It’s about getting it on their radar. When I say “getting it to them,” I mean spending the money to push it.

On the “Come On Baby (Remix),” you call yourself “the world’s most underrated.” Do you really feel that way?

Of course I’m the world’s most underrated, by far. You can go song-for-song. I can name 10 songs that I put out there that with money behind them and support, they would be classic records. Let’s see, there’s “The Color Purple,” “Come Again,” “Favorite Things,” “Stocking Cap,” “My Mommy,” “Pain in My Life,” “True Story,” “Contraband,” “Dreamz,” “Desperado,” “Shot in My Booty,” “Letter P,” “Out There”…I can keep going, man. Those are original songs that would go down in history. I can name mad songs easy. I don’t know any other artist that is not a legend or has not come out that can do that. A lot of artists hop on mixtapes and they may have classic freestyles, but they don’t have classic songs. I’m the only one that has that.

You also say, “Who do you think could body me lyrically?” Do you feel you have any competition right now?

New jack-wise, I don’t think I have no competition. Not at all. I think somebody competing against me is going to have to be one of the vets like Kool G. Rap, Jay-Z, Nas, Ice Cube or somebody like that. It’s going to have to be one of those artists. Maybe 50. I could never record with another artist again and I would be happy. I did a remix with Nas and he came to me and he really appreciated it. That was the “War (Remix).” I did “The Letter P” with Kool G. Rap. I did “Who Can Get Busy?” with Grand Puba. And I did “Come On Baby (Remix)” with Jay-Z. If I never record with another artist again, I’m good. There’s really no other rapper that I have the desire to work with anymore. I’ve busted my artistic nut when it comes to collaborations.

You also say, “A lot of fakes in the industry, but I don’t let ‘em get to me.” That’s easier said than done. How do you do it?

You have to understand, most of these dudes are motivated by money. They are greedy. When you’re dealing with somebody that’s motivated by their lower desires, you can’t take them seriously. You know they’re full of shit. They don’t care about making music. They care about making a dollar. I have a good team around me and I know they give a fuck about my music, my life and my well-being more so than me making them a dollar because all of them are rich already.

You ended the “Come On Baby (Remix)” with “I’m feeling disrespected/If everybody’s fucking dimes, then who’s getting all these ugly bitches pregnant?” When did you start being a comedian?

(laughs) That’s just a part of my character. That’s a part of my character. I do that a lot with my music. A lot of times people think I’m just a guy that preaches about black consciousness, but I’m a silly dude when people get to know me. Laughter is good for the soul. I always try to find reasons to laugh in every situation. It’s true. The way a lot of these rappers tell it, you would swear that these guys always had beautiful girls around them. There are only a few rappers who say, “Before I was rapping I wasn’t getting none of these hoes.” I like poking fun at a lot of these sucker MCs.

In “L.O.V.E.”, you said, “The same bitches that you bag in the Benz, I could bag with this old pair of raggedy Timbs.”

I always had the gift of gab. I was dating a very famous supermodel before I got my deal. I don’t even like putting her business out there because she moved on with her life and she’s engaged and she’s getting married, but I did my numbers. I did my numbers with a lot of these video girls. They know who they are. And this is before I even popped off. I ain’t even pop off yet. I’m just getting started, man.

What do you think when you see rappers only getting girls because of their status?

I’m just on the outside looking in, judging off the music. When you see them in the club, there’s 8 bottles in front of them. They paid $450 for a bottle that they know only costs $40 in the store because they want to look a certain way. There’s a stigma attached to that and I don’t know when that became the status quo, but it’s funny. It’s comical to me.

The “Come On Baby” video came out this past week too. It looks like the push for The Greatest Story Never Told is actually starting.


I hope people get to see the long version. The way they cut it on TV, they cut it short. If you don’t see that, you won’t understand the whole video. It’s up on YouTube and HipHopGame.


You shot the video in a small club and in black and white. Why did you do that?

I wanted a gritty video. I could have easily when to the ‘hood or the projects and shot a video. I wanted it to be gritty but at the same time universal. A crazy promoter booked me in this crazy underground rock club and I’m like, ‘What the fuck is this?’ and he’s like, ‘Their money is green too.’ Just is looking around like, ‘What the fuck is this?’ Me, Just and Swizz are ripping the crowd and they all love the way it turns out.

I think that grittiness is what’s missing out the game. All these videos are too flashy. I think dudes are all flashy with it. Do you remember the “Get At Me Dog” video with DMX? That was pretty much a performance video of him onstage at The Tunnel. He’s pretty much just rapping onstage and that’s a classic video. I didn’t want to have to rent a Lamborghini and then when you see me, I don’t have it. I didn’t want to take that route. Whatever the suckers are doing, I want to do something different.

I didn’t even have the biggest budget in the world for this. Sometimes my budgets are borderline disrespectful. I don’t know what else I can do. I can put out classic music, get all the press in the world, have the biggest manager on the planet and work with the biggest rap artist in the world. All of this my team has accomplished without the support of the actual label. Do you know how much it would cost to get Jay-Z to do a verse? I could shoot 5 videos for the cost of that 16. It would cost probably $200,000 to get a verse from Jay-Z. I got a 16 from a lot of people and it wasn’t in my budget. I get no credit for that. A lot of it was out of love because they’re fucking with the team.

I think the video turned out good. I’m getting good feedback from it. We do this one and we move on.

Did you experience any negative fallout from the situation with Prodigy that happened a month ago?

Just radio. Radio pulled my record out of rotation, but you know, that Prodigy shit, it was nothing. It was nothing, man. The only reason it went as far as it did was because their team put the fake-edited video out on You Tube, They did that sucker shit. If they didn’t do that shit, you would have had to have been there to know what happened. They tried to use me to gain points. I’m new and they’ve been in the game for 12 years. They were trying to use me as a come-up.


What did you think of Prodigy saying on MTV.com that he’s been punched in the face plenty of times?

He’s probably going to get punched in the face plenty more times in the place where he’s going.

Did you get any negative feedback from fans, who said they always liked you but couldn’t believe you did that to Mobb Deep?

There were some people who saw their version of the video and they believed they really chased me out of the club because of their edited, dumb shit. But it is what it is. You have a lot of frauds in this game. These dudes are not as gangster as they say they are. I always knew that and I think that most people knew that. I don’t think that anybody is surprised by that. They get robbed and beat up a lot.

When you say your record was pulled out of rotation, was it because DJs were picking sides or was it because the radio station was mad about their event getting shut down?

When you do something wrong, you have to pay the consequences. I paid the consequences and I moved on. The original version of “Come On Baby” was going. I was getting around 200 spins without having a visual. That was really good. Shit happens, man.

Were you wrong in that situation?

I was wrong for going there, knowing that I had problems with these dudes. I don’t say I was wrong because of what happened. I was wrong in a lot of ways. Let’s say it didn’t go my way and they would have stomped me out like they were trying to do. If that would have happened, I would have blamed myself for going to a place where there were a bunch of people that I didn’t get along with. If something happened to me and I had gotten hurt, I really would have had nobody to blame but myself. I’m paying the consequences for my record getting pulled and I got no one to blame but myself.

Do you move differently today because of what’s happened to you, from the attempted robbery two years ago to the Prodigy situation?

I don’t go out much. I don’t play the clubs. I’m mostly in the studio or in my house. I think I partied enough for a whole lifetime.

Your album The Greatest Story Never Told is scheduled to come out on December 4. Do you think it’s really going to come out then?

Who knows?

Will it come out in 2007?

Who knows? But if it doesn’t, my record getting pulled is part of the reason. You have to understand, if you don’t have a record playing on the radio, you’re fucked. These record companies only believe in the radio. That’s all they believe in. They don’t believe in other forms of media. They only believe in radio. And radio affects video and vice versa. If it’s getting a lot of spins on radio, they’re going to play it on the video shows a lot. I tell the label all the time, go give T-Pain that $100k or give Akon the $150k and tell them to produce the record for me to rap on. It’s that simple. They own radio right now. This is what hip-hop has become.

Mims, Soulja Boy and Hurricane Chris all had huge singles on the radio and poor album sales. When do you think the labels are going to learn that it’s not all about getting spins on the radio?

I think M.I.M.S. did aight, but overall, you can’t only sell a song. Really, you have to sell the artist. The artist can sell the song and but you can’t expect to sell a lot of it. The ringtone is 20 seconds of a song, the hook basically, so if you sell a ringtone, nobody cared about your rap, just the hook. To sell albums, you have to really sell the artist. It’s like a painting. I can go trace something. Let’s look at Claude Monet. I can make a painting that looks exactly like his and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, but he’s really the artist. They can look the same and feel the same and everything, but the fact that it was actually him that did it is what’s going to make it valuable. That’s what’s going on right now. Anybody can make these records that these people are putting out. People are caring more about the songs than the artists.

I don’t know when you’re going to see a change. They’ll change their formula when they see someone else do it and win. Whoever does it first will win. Jay-Z has never had a No. 1 song but he’s tied with Elvis Presley for having the most No. 1 albums. Isn’t that some crazy shit? Meanwhile, a lot of these ringtone rappers have a lot of No. 1 songs out but they’ll never have a No. 1 album out. We’re not going to be talking about these dudes 10 years from now. Rappers, they come and go every day now. You know what I’m trying to do? I’m trying to think of a new name for what I do. If this shit is hip-hop, then I do something else. I have to come up with a name for a new genre of music. If that’s what hip-hop is, it’s time for it to shift because it’s not the same. I can’t call what I do what they’re doing. If that’s what hip-hop is, the shit that they’re pushing and what’s out there on the radio, I have to start a whole new genre of music.

When do you think The Greatest Story Never Told will come out?

I don’t know. I don’t know, man. They own the record. They own the album.

But it’s done?

Yeah. It’s pretty much done. Yeah. Besides the technical part of mixing and mastering, it’s finished as far as music. And it’s crazy. I already know, regardless, once people hear it, they’re going to be like, ‘What the fuck? Who would be dumb enough to drop the ball on this album?’ People like the original and the remix for “Come On Baby.” I don’t have one song on your site that’s not a 4.5 and those are throwaways. The Moral of the Story is better than all these albums coming out. Pick that up on Tuesday.

The Moral of the Story was scheduled to drop in early October. What was the hold up in getting The Moral of the Story done?

Just being focused on the album. I kind of stepped away from that for a minute and I figured I could put this out to hold the people over for a little bit until the album comes out.

Is The Moral of the Story an accurate precursor to The Greatest Story Never Told?

Yeah, man! It’s phenomenal. The music is crazy. I just have to go out there and do my thing and shoot my videos. I’m putting out some videos on the internet. There’s a book coming with The Moral of the Story. It’s a novel written by my homie Sharieff aka A.C Clayton, who I grew up with. We put it together. The Moral of the Story is the soundtrack to the book. The novel is loosely based on the lives of kids in the streets. If you’re from the ‘hood, we all see these stories. The main character is a kid named Kay Kay. He gets locked up and he goes through things that I did. You have to read the book. It’s phenomenal shit, man. It’s legendary shit. And we’re doing one for the album. It’s not going to be a whole novel. It’s going to be a short one.

Are you going to make a return to Entourage next season?

They’re starting to write in December. As they write, that’s how shit comes about.

Jay-Z’s American Gangster has been getting some very positive and some very negative reviews. What do you think of the album?

I think lyrically, Jay stepped his shit up. I didn’t even think he could do that. Nobody can say that shit is a weak album, lyrically. The beats are good too. I give the beats an 8.5 or an 8, but the rhymes are above 10.

Did you see American Gangster yet?

Nah. I didn’t see it.

What do you want to say to everybody?

Support that music, man. I’m trying to think of a name for what I do because the shit’s not hip-hop no more. When I think of a new name for what it is that I do, then I will give what I do a new name. The bullshit that I’m hearing, if that’s hip hop, then it’s time for me to start a new genre. What they’re doing is not what I grew up on. It’s not the same thing. We’ll see what’s up.
By Brian Kayser














real talk

[King_Koopa08]

propz good read

[Lo$o]

real talk, he really is under rated though

[ProGame$tyle]

he's nice
im not dick rid'in

[chukno13]

yea is underrated but so are alot of rappers who are better than him

[smokes]

This dude deserves to sell. He has the full package. But record companies dont see that.

[Tommy-Gun]

sucks that since he layed out P most stations are pulling his shit off the playlist.

[eatpooz]

Good Read, i feel sorry for the dude not being able to drop his shit... lookin forward to whenever them label hoes decide to drop it

[HOUDINI]

if he quits rapping no one will even notice,if he doesn't quit rapping,no one will even notice.

[18thletter]

saigon is a monster,i can't wait for the album,plus this remix is tight