Saigon Urb mag interview

[Elano]

Saigon has always been a misfit. Ever since he first stepped onto the scene, he has been one of the few voices in hip hop able to accurately and unapologetically criticize the industry from within. So many rappers claim to be keeping it real while simultaneously sacrificing their individuality and integrity to the whims of their slave-driving record labels. After dealing with years of label drama and industry bullshit – all before ever even releasing his major label debut – Sai was more than ready to quit the rap game. Then he realized that he had to take his destiny into his own hands. He’s thinking ahead of the game now, and with a cushy new deal with Amalgam Digital he’s released All in A Day’s Work, a project exclusively produced by Statik Selektah that was recorded in one 24 hour session. Sai took a few moments of his time to tell us exactly what’s wrong with the cancerous music biz, and how he discovered the loopholes in the game… the hard way.

You say that you and Statik made the new album in 24 hours. It sounds like he just gave you a beat tape and you went in on it. Is that how it happened?
Nah, it didn’t happen like that. I went to Statik’s studio, which is pretty much a basement apartment in Brooklyn – records everywhere, posters on the wall. I went to record a song for Grand Theft Auto – which is on the album as well – called “Spit.” I went do that record and put some ad libs on there or whatever, and you know when producers see artists they start playing beats. So he would just play beats. The way his setup is, the mic is right there in the booth – the mic is like right next to you. So he’d play a beat, put the beat in the headphones and I’d start rapping or jot some shit down real quick, and the next thing you know we’d have a song. We did that like three or four times and were like “Shit, we could do an EP! We got 6 songs, we got an EP right here!” Then everybody started getting excited and drinking and muthafuckas is in the room vibin’ – everybody’s vibin.’ So we got to six and [Statik] was like, “Shit, let’s keep going!” Then we got to eight – two more and we have an album. We did ten… eleven songs. We got to 11 like “Fuck it.” It ain’t that we did it, it’s the quality. It’s actually good music. Anybody can go in there and put something together. I think we did a decent job.

It sounds very spur-of-the-moment.
It was. We didn’t plan it at all. We didn’t say “Hey, let’s make an album in one day.” It was more like I didn’t even know… I thought I was going in to do the ad libs! We had a good chemistry because he’s a die-hard hip hop dude. He’s a big Premier fan. He loves that New York, gritty hip hop sound and I love it as well. That’s why we just put it out there. We didn’t go promo heavy and go crazy. When it’s time to do that, I’ll do it. This is more for people to get their alternative. If you wanna hear some hip hop – some shit that [actually] sounds like hip hop – there are alternatives. There’s not a lot out there though. Not a lot to choose from.

Releasing the album on Amalgam Digital, what were the differences you noticed as far as label politics go?
Aw man, there were no politics! Amalgam Digital is not a record company, they’re a new media outfit. What I did with them was a partnership. It was like, “Ok, we kinda have to put our creative minds together.” They have the resources and the financial backing and I got the music, let’s put them together as a team and get the music out there on a creative scale without having to play the bullshit industry games. Cuz the industry is wack – a bunch of fake muthafuckas, a lot of funny style half-a-men runnin’ around with money and power that don’t care about the artistry. They don’t care about the legacy of hip hop. They don’t give a fuck. I had to write my own ticket, man. I always knew I was gonna have to. For me to succeed I always knew I was gonna have to do it my way. I saw that very early at Atlantic records. I don’t know how I ended up being there so long because I saw within the first 3 or 4 months of being there that we were on different pages. To make my way in the game doing it my way – and I’m still on that mission to do it my way – it’s working. In one day we’re at #4 on the iTunes rap charts. We’re up there with popular shit, so we’re pretty much doing well.

What are some of the things about the music industry that don’t sit well with you?
It’s quite simple. These people, they don’t care about the artistry of [hip hop]. For instance, remember how Motown had the Motown sound? Instead of spending part-time with the music it was about talent. Even with Loud Records, you had to be extremely talented to be on Loud Records back in the day. There was no “oh you’re gonna make it with a gimmick.” They had Pun, Mobb Deep, Wu-Tang, Xzibit – they had artists that had TALENT. It wasn’t about “ok, what song is gonna get on the radio.” Hip hop has become so popular and so big that corporate America has swallowed it up. It’s not about the art at all anymore. [New artists] are like jingle writers that are emceeing. If you can come up with a catchy jingle, you can consider yourself a hip hop artist. That didn’t fly before. Even biting, biting used to be something you couldn’t do. Like Autotune, nobody else would have been able to do that cuz that’s T-Pain’s thing. Let him rock with it! Now it’s like, “oh shit it worked for him,” so everybody’s doing it. Everybody’s copying and that takes away from the art. And it ain’t really the artists, it’s the labels saying “Yo, we need somebody like T-Pain. Look what he’s doing, it’s working.” Instead of trying something new and being innovative, everybody’s fuckin’ copy-catting. That shit to me was a big turn off. How are you gonna break the mold if you keep tracing the same picture? It got wack. It got corny real fast.

Were there any specific situations you had to deal with?
They wanted me to do songs with Pretty Ricky, man. Know what I’m sayin,’man? Saigon and Pretty Ricky don’t even sound right! They were like, “Yo, but they’re number such and such on the billboard charts.” Come on, I don’t give a fuck about that! Every song they make is meant to be played on Top 40 radio. How I’m gonna go into the studio like “oh I need to make a song for Top 40 radio”? But that’s what these new young artists are doing. They’re going in there [being] gimmicky and ridiculous instead of speaking from the heart. I wanna hear music from the soul. I wanna hear something that’s gonna make me go, “damn man, this song almost made me cry” or “damn this song really made me happy.” You know what I mean? I don’t wanna hear the same gimmicky cookie cutter bullshit.

Right, something that’s gonna last. Cuz where’s Pretty Ricky now?
Pretty much. They’ll play [a song] every day, 40 million times a day, and then you never hear the song again and you don’t care. Meanwhile, you can throw on a Michael Jackson Off the Wall song and the crowd acts like it just came out yesterday – like, “Aw this is my shit!” These songs that come out now, nobody cares about them next year, much less five years from now. They’re really taking the art form and ripping it up and shredding it apart. Hip hop as we knew it… the freshness of it… it’s getting so stale because corporate America raped it dry. It’s almost dry – like there’s no more blood in it. The vampires all finished sucking all the blood out of it.   

I heard for a while that sample clearances where holding back the release of your major label album. If that’s no longer the case than what is?
Atlantic never wanted to commit. They would have put my album out but they were gonna pretty much put it out with no support. And I was like, “Yo, don’t do me like that. Me and Just Blaze worked hard on this record. Y’all saw how hard we worked. Most of this shit we did on our own without none of y’all support” – features, everything. They didn’t pay Jay-Z. You know how much you would have had to pay Jay-Z to do a fuckin’ 16 on your record? He’s so rich that he don’t work like that. It’s gotta be a favor. He’s gotta fuck with you to get on your record. So we’re doing all this shit, going out of the box and doing things that they couldn’t even pull off. You would think that at some point they would meet us halfway. They never put me on a promo run, they never did anything. They really shitted on me because they didn’t see where I was going. They didn’t get it. The people that needed to get it didn’t get it. They wanted me to go in there and do songs with Pretty Ricky and be another Flo Rida or do songs with T-Pain, and I was like “I really don’t wanna do that. Can I be artistic? What the fuck did y’all sign me for and give me this money if y’all didn’t understand what kinda artist I was.” It didn’t make sense. I respect everybody up there. I respect what they do. But I was going in a totally different direction.

So the album is done?
Ummm, almost done. I am technically… yeah, it’s done.   

It’s almost becoming like Detox.
Yeah, I know man. It’s fucked up because I wanna get it out to the people and move on. It was becoming a black cloud. Amalgam came at the perfect time because I was like “you know what, I’m gonna put myself in a situation where I’m not thinking like an artist.” I’m thinking more like an exec and [considering] the business part as well, so I feel like I had to boss up and start making my own moves and putting out my own music. The importance of ownership and publishing… I had no idea what that was when I came into [the music industry]. Now I know that’s where you make your money at. You gotta own your promotion; you gotta own your masters to really make money. You gotta own your music. If you’re on a major, the deals they’re doing now are 360 deals. They want a piece of your merch, they want a piece of your touring, they want a piece of everything.

Ringtones…
Yeah, if you do a ringback they own your voice. People don’t know that in a contract it says, “We own your voice. We own your likeness. We own your image. We own your FACE, muthafucka!” For your little advance, what you’re giving up is not worth it. But we don’t see that. They think “Oh I’m gonna be famous! I’ma be on TV!” It’s sad.

So do you feel like you’re in a comfortable place right now? You were talking about quitting for a while.
When I was talking about quitting I just wanted to get out of the record deal. I figured, “If I quit rapping, then what are y’all gonna do then? I’m not gonna rap no more.” I really needed to get outta there a few years ago. Everything happened for a reason. I’m politically based right now – I wanna work with other artists, I wanna start producing. I’m getting up there. I’m 30 now, so I’m not trying to be around still trying to be a brand new artist acting like I’m young and doing shit the young boys do. I gotta grow the fuck up at the same time. I would like to get my album out, but it’s not gonna hinder me from living my life and creating a life for my family.

I feel like you can still be an artist and be older. Your music is pretty mature as it is. Jay-Z is damn near 40.   
Yeah, I don’t get caught up on the age thing. I’m just saying as far as my lifetime – it takes a lot of work to do this shit. I don’t just mean the writing and recording aspect, but the getting out there on the road. Cause I’m grassroots, man. I’m still on the chitlin circuit, doing venues with 300 or 400 people. I still believe in building one fan at a time, so I’m still in the trenches. I still do the $2000 or $2500 shows. I’m out there on the grind – hard body. But it gets draining and you just wanna fall back sometimes, but you gotta grind, gotta get it. You get back what you put in, but I just wanna make my own rules and do it my way. With the technological era and Amalgam Digital – the way they work – it’s perfect for me because we’re ahead of the curve right now. Nowhere have you ever heard of doing an album in one day. I did the album on March 10th and we put it out on March 17th. So it was pretty much wrapped up in a week. A week later I got an album out when I had just been sitting around on Atlantic. It ain’t my debut album, but it’s music out there for the people that like my music.

[T-Dogg]

Dammit Sai, get the record out already.