I was just days away from my college graduation in May of 2004 when I interviewed Saigon for the first time. He talked in-depth about the origins of his name, his time in prison, and his hopes to better his life and the lives of others through his budding music career. He also spoke excitedly about his debut album, The Greatest Story Never Told, which he expected to be released sometime in the year or so that followed. Since that interview I graduated college, taught for three years, started a full-time DJing and writing career, and now find myself in the RubyHornet offices typing up our second interview, recorded just a month ago. Saigon, well, while he turned in a recurring role on “Entourage”, and released a handful of critically well-received mixtapes and an album made in 24 hours with Statik Selektah, he’s still waiting on The Greatest Story Never Told to be released, and his career to really take off.
The album was supposed to be released on Atlantic Records, but Saigon left the NYC’s label offices before his completed debut, something he attributes to his unfamiliarity and nonacceptance of “the game”. “Now I understand this game,” Saigon told me just a few weeks ago. “And how everybody says, ‘yo we run the game we got this game on smash.’ It’s a f**king game man, it’s really a game. It’s like playing Monopoly and you’re the only one taking it serious. You’re the only one who acts like you’re going to really own this property and everybody else understands it’s a game. I always approached it as ‘OK, I’m going to use this to get my message across to the people.’ But I chose not to realize that this was a game all along.”
It’s a tough position to be in for Saigon because so many of his fans respect him due to his unwillingness to bend or break. But when critical acclaim doesn’t pay the bills, you’re forced to make some changes. “I don’t want to play the game. But I’ve put myself so deep into this s**t as far as depending on this s**t to make a living,” Sai concedes. “I could have had a Masters degree in the time that I spent locked up. I gave this s**t 17 years, so now this has to work for me.”
Saigon tried a new approach on the October 6th release, Warning Shots 2. The new approach, the game, and Hip Hop is all the focus of this RH exclusive with Saigon…
RubyHornet: The first thing I wanted to talk to you about was the video for “Believe It”, which I thought was amazing. What drew me in to the video immediately was the symbolism with the American flag. From the first shot it started to stick out and it continues to evolve throughout the video to where almost everything is draped in the flag or has red white and blue in it some where. I have my own ideas as to why, but I would like to get it straight from you. Where were you going with that and what you were trying to say there?
Saigon: I think I have to give a lot of credit to my man James Delgato. It was kind of his idea… It’s just showing how America is the best and the worst country in the world. You can make it here and be as successful as possible, but there is also the big steel boot of oppression ready to stomp you on your neck. So it just shows that America has everything to offer good and bad. Everything. So as much as it’s a good country, it is also a terrible country. So it’s like the ying and yang. Everything, whether it was negative or positive, we put the flag on it. We put the flag on everything. There’s a guy going to rob a store with the flag on his mask. The police are planting drugs on a kid with the flag on it. It just shows in the symbolism that America is an opportunist. America is the country of opportunity but it just depends on what route you take. It’s all available to you. If you want it, it’s here, good or bad.
RubyHornet: I’m just curious, what does it mean to you to be an American?
Saigon: I’m American by default. I’m American because I was born here, and raised here. So I am an American, and I’m a proud American. But American ideology is something that I am sometimes at odds with. I represent America anywhere I go, and say ‘yeah, I’m an American.’ But at the same time, I wish America would change this and that and this and that… Being that I’m not a politician, and they’ve given me a felony so I can probably never be a politician, and that’s America. Their system is designed so perfectly that it’s hard for me to even do anything because I have a violent felony. So no matter what, even though you’ve changed your life and you haven’t been in trouble in almost ten years, even if you shot someone before you can’t even own a gun to protect your family. It’s really complicated.
RubyHornet: That’s something in the last verse of “You Gotta Believe It”. You say, “don’t forget I’m an ex-con that made it the farthest.” I’m just wondering if that’s something just to remind your listeners or at the same time do you have to remind yourself? And how much of that ex-con is in you or in that mind set?
Saigon: That’s the thing. America is so complex. Being an ex-con just means you got convicted. But anybody can be convicted of something. That just means they found you guilty of something. Because what they do in America, or the way the system works, is all they care about is the conviction. They can get you to plead guilty, or find you guilty. They just want you guilty. That’s why they say innocent til proven guilty, that’s the biggest crock of s**t in the world. If you were allegedly accused of something and they didn’t think you did it they wouldn’t lock you up. And they won’t lock you up unless you have the money or bail. And bail means we’re still gonna charge you, but you can still be free. But if you’re not rich, you probably won’t have the money to get bailed out. You still have to stay locked up. So when I say ‘I’m the ex-con that’s made it the farthest’ I don’t even mean in music. I mean as far as my mentality, as far as where I came from, my understanding of the system, and how the system is designed to set us up for failure. So it’s up to us to really realize that. All the prisons are full of black and Latinos, but none of the prisons are in our communities. They put the prisons in up state New York and what happens is that these prisons become the whole economy of these little towns. Meaning our hardships are fueling their economy. So when you’re in prison and you see an officer with a weird name like officer “Chicanelli” for instance then you go to commisary and you see a name tag that says Chicanelli you ask, ‘would you happen to be related to officer Chicanelli?’ and they say ‘yea that’s my father’ or ‘my uncle.’ Then you go to school and see that the teacher’s name is Ms. Chicanelli too, and you’re like ‘damn, the whole family works for the jail.’ This happens because that becomes their economy. So they need to keep putting these laws in place to keep us in there whether they are just or unjust. So at that point we become like cattle. But we are human beings, we’re not animals. I’m sorry. I just took that somewhere else.
RubyHornet: You mentioned in your response a certain mind-state. It reminds be of another song where you say “I could be rich as Phillip Drummund and still bumming.” It’s clever and it’s funny for those of us who know Different Strokes. It struck me as saying something about one’s mind state compared to their current environment.
Saigon: In a nutshell Hip Hop right now is a big ass commercial for whoever owns Gucci and Luis Vuitton. They love Hip Hop. They get all this free advertising. Meanwhile, they don’t have to do nothing for our community. I’ve never seen them offer to put up money to put computers in our schools or to do anything for us. This is urban music. It comes from the black community and all rappers do is make it seem like their product is larger than life. Or you have girls who work all day just to get $800 dollars to buy a damn purse. Just to have that look. So they can walk in the club and people can say, ‘oh she got a Gucci bag.’ And it’s sad because Louis Vuitton could walk in that same club and they wouldn’t know what he looked like. The influence of the music is so strong, but it’s all going in the wrong direction. Even if I had all the money in the world I’m not going to sit here and rap about buying Ferrari’s. All this money and influence y’all got, come help the children who are growing up under me. What are you all doing for my community? I’m helping your business flourish because my song is being played 800 million times on the radio and I’m promoting your product, what are you doing for my cause? No artist has that integrity and they’re so selfish, or they only care about their own personal well being. And they don’t realize that they are responsible for a whole generation.
RubyHornet: I understand what you’re saying, and you said something in your response that I found interesting that I want to talk to you about. You said there’s so much influence but it’s not being used the right way. There are other artists that are like you. You’ve mentioned in your songs things like ‘I can rap about making money and this other s**t, but it’s just not who I am as a person and I just can’t do it.’ There are other dudes like you, and they might not be as popular as the guys who are talking about LV, Gucci, or popping bottles and s**t. But do you ever think that Hip Hop is not the vehicle that we think it can be, and realistically it’s not the right vehicle to talk about those kind of things.
Saigon: Hip Hop is the vehicle. It’s just being exploited. It’s being exploited in all the wrong ways. It’s being exploited for the money that it generates. Of course it generates a lot of money but it influences. When you go to China and see a kid with a f**kin fitted cap, doo rag and baggy jeans you know he’s influenced by Hip Hop. On the other side of the world when you go to Sweden, London, Australia and these kids are trying to break dance and do grafitti, you understand the influence is stronger than an artist’s personal gain. If you look at the biggest artists in the world, they have more money than they will ever spend. What will they do with their influence? They do nothing with it. Money doesn’t equate to power. They have all this influence and do nothing with it. It’s people with all this influence and do nothing with it, it’s like a waste of power. We know you’re rich we know you’ve got more money than you could ever spend in 10 lifetimes. Ok what?!? You’re going to grow old and die and we are going to remember you because you’re rich? In order for you to become a martyr or leave a legacy behind you have to do something very influential. I don’t mean having the nicest clothes or having the best fashion. I think fashion is for women. When I was growing up women were more into fashion than men. Men are more rough around the edges. We didn’t care about getting our nails done, now a days men are in the nail salon more than women. So it’s like who is going to teach the next generation how to be men? When I say men I don’t mean broke. I mean responsible men who understand their role in society. And we don’t have that. Now we have men who talk about how fly they are and how their clothes look and how their eye brows got done. And I’m scared to see how Hip Hop’s going to look in 10 years.
RubyHornet: I want to go back to something you said back to 2004 during our very first interview. We were talking about similar things back then and the subject of record companies came up. This is exactly what you said back then, “I don’t need a record company to come pimp me and tell me, ‘oh, we need a song for the ladies,’ or ‘You got to wear this,’ or ‘You got to make this club song.’ F**k it, you do it. That’s not me and that’s not what I’m about and meanwhile you’re pimping me. You’re giving me 85 cents for every record I sell. Get the f**k out of here.” Those were your thoughts in ’04. You were thinking that way back then, so are you even surprised about what happened with Atlantic records?
Saigon: No, not at all. And that was before my record deal. I’m glad you brought that up because people see I stick to my guns. I’m a real person. I’ve been on a major after that interview and I’ve been in the situation and they couldn’t get me to fold. That’s the reason why I’m here today. I could have blown up. I could have been one of the biggest rappers out because I knew the formula. I’m cut from a cloth where your integrity is everything. When I mean integrity, I don’t mean as far as how other people perceive you. I mean how you perceive yourself, what you stand for. I’ve been taught all my life that if you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything. So as a man you have to take a stance to say ‘ok this is what I’m about and nobody is going to make, break or shake me.’ Now I understand this game. And how everybody says, ‘yo we run the game we got this game on smash.’ It’s a f**king game man, it’s really a game. It’s like playing Monopoly and you’re the only one taking it serious. You’re the only one who acts like you’re going to really own this property and everybody else understands it’s a game. I always approached it as ‘OK, I’m going to use this to get my message across to the people.’ But I chose not to realize that this was a game all along. Why enter to play the game when you’re going to come with a serious mentality? Doesn’t really make sense. I kind of felt like, ‘ohhhh the jokes on me.’
RubyHornet: The sentiments that you’re sharing with me were also relayed to me by Rhymefest from Chicago. He has a lot of similar ideas and beliefs as you do. One thing I asked him at one point was, ‘Fest a lot of people follow you, the LA Times said you were an interesting person to follow on Twitter, you have all these ideas, you want to do real community action. Why do you choose to still make music if you’re so fed up with how the business is run?’ Have you explored taking your music and expressing it through other means, why do you continue the actual art form of making music?
Saigon: I’m going to tell you what music is. Music is the biggest fastest way to get a message out to the world, faster than even twitter. If your song gets 10 spins the audience is a few hundred thousand people… There are people who tuned in to the radio for everything. So if you have a message that you want to get out fast and as effectively as possible, that’s a great great great outlet. I’m in the community working with the kids and I might see 45 kids, but if I get my song played 5 times that’s 100,000 kids. I still can’t walk down the street without getting mad love, without putting out music. And when I say walking down the street, it ain’t Melrose where they recognize me from Entourage, I’m talking about the South side of Chicago all the way over to Brooklyn where n***as say ‘you don’t have to tuck your chain in over here. You’re one of the real n***as who can wear your chain over here without us wanting to take it.’ That’s because of what I stand for. I’m not a bragger.
RubyHornet: I wanted to talk to you about the message in “You Gotta Believe It”, which is ultimately saying ‘you can make it.’ Are you someone who is careful in how you transmit that message seeing that you know the system and seem to have a very strong grip on how it works. How do you tailor the message? It is true, anyone can make it, but it’s not like everyone starts at the same place. My parents say, ‘you can be whatever you want,’ but I can have a friend across town who’s parents tell him the same things but our situations are not the same and where I’m able to start is much different. Yes you can do whatever you want but you have to filter in that it may be extra hard right?
Saigon: That’s the reason why I try to come to the people as the people. It’s easy to pull up in a Maybach and say ‘hey you can get one of these.’ That’s why sometimes you got to put that s**t away. It’s almost like Jesus. Jesus hung with prostitutes thieves and murders. This is the most righteous person that we really know in the history of the world. This is a man who really lived, and he hung out with the worst of the worst because he lead by example to show people there was a right and wrong. That’s why when I come to the people I don’t act like I’m nice, I’m better than you because I got a deal and all that. I say, ‘look man you can do this s**t too. We come from the same place.’ All it takes is discipline. Nobody ever thinks about having discipline and will power. Where’s the will power at? It’s easy to f**kin have a lack of will power… We don’t emphasize having strong will. We don’t emphasize having control over our lower desire. Like sex. A guy thinks he’s more of a man by how many women he can sleep with. That’s how we grow up thinking. That s**t tears your soul apart. Now it’s to the point where women think ‘f**k it, we can f**k as many n***as as we want to.’ You birth. Your body is supposed to be your temple. This is what brings and births the future of our generation. Just because a guy is handsome then you should f**k him?!? And that’s how a lot of women think nowadays. If a guy can do it, we can do it, there ain’t no double standard. We can go f**k as many n***as as we want. Don’t you realize that’s your birth canal? This is how you bring forth the future of civilization. There is nobody there putting that in their ear. So the only thing there is, if you got a big butt you can make money because guys will make it rain on you because you can make your butt cheeks clap. These little girls grow up thinking, hey this is a way out. If I got a big butt guys hoot and holler when I walk up the street. Either one of them guys is gonna give me some money, or I’m going in one of these strip clubs. Who the f** cares about getting a education when I can just go shake my ass and make a hundred thousand dollars a year?
RubyHornet: So I wanted to go into Warning Shots 2. What are you hoping to get from the album putting it out at this time. What makes the time right?
Saigon: At this point I’m playing the game right. I got an album. I did All in a Days Work earlier this year. It was a strictly Hip Hop album. We went in there and did Hip Hop, you know, boom bap and they over looked it. Phenomenal piece of work. I go back and listen to it today and I think it’s a phenomenal piece of work. But you can tell I’m not playing the game and I’m still thinking about the culture. There is no honor amongst thieves. I came into this game as an honorable man and going, ‘ok, this is Hip Hop at its finest and it’s going to be appreciated.’ The powers that be, the ones that get the Hip Hop to the people are going ‘nah nah, we don’t hear the singles,’ or as they seriously called it, the jingles. ‘Where’s your jingles?’ So, on Warning Shots 2 I’m like, ‘let me show them I can make some of the best jingles they’ve ever heard.’ Meanwhile there are 15 songs on the album. If I got 14 chances to show you what I can do I’m not going to show you 15 tracks of the same s**t. I’m going to show you that any realm you put me I a can master. Warning Shots 2 is showing people I can master the game. I got a song with OJ Da Juiceman and it’s probably one of my favorite songs on there.
RubyHornet: I was going to ask you about that. What do you say to someone who has been following you since ’04 and Warning Shots 1 and all the other stuff you put out, a hardcore Saigon fan might dislike OJ just from what they heard on the radio and seeing his image. If they really like what you’re doing and they really believe in that-
Saigon: Well what I would say to them is ‘don’t put me in one box.’ If you really are a Saigon fan you either know about songs like, “Get My Nut” and others and you would know that I like to jump in other lanes so I’m never pigeon holed. So for some reason they put me in a pigeon hole with conscious rap. Conscious just means aware so I love the title of conscious rap. That means I’m a rapper that’s aware of what’s going on. What’s a flipside to conscious? Unconscious? That means you’re knocked the f**k out. You have no idea what’s going on around you. I’m a human being. I love women and make songs about women. And at times I make songs about giving women the business. I think I’m the best n***a in the world at that. Sometimes I wanna write a song about giving women the d**k game. And people say ‘oh, that’s not a Saigon song.’ But this is me, why do I have to stick to your script? I’ve been having that problem. When I play new music for people they look at me. It ain’t like I’m just a different n***a than I was yesterday. No. I’m me, I’m a human being. Some days I’m happy, some days I want to have fun. Other days I might see something on the news that disgusts me and I write about it and I put it out. So don’t judge me for one mood when I’m a person with many different dynamics and many different dimensions to myself. It’s almost like Tupac. Not to compare myself to Pac but he would make track five, “I Get Around” and track 6 would be “Keep Your Head Up”. Track 5: “The underground just don’t stop for hoes, I get around, ” meaning he’s f**king everything in site, he’s a male whore. And the second song is ‘look women you can be a strong woman without a man.’ That’s just the reality of being human. There’s like 3 or 4 songs on Warning Shots where people are going to be like ‘whoa I didn’t think he would take it there.’ Those are probably are my favorite songs because they presented a challenge, and I think that I meet the challenge by far.
RubyHornet: Do artists ever come up to you and say things like, ‘Man, when I read some of your interviews and hear what you’re saying and I’m wondering, are you talking about the kind of music I make?’
Saigon: Yea that happens a lot, but those are the artists who tell me like ‘yo, I’m trying to get this money.’ And when you look at it from that aspect you understand. I didn’t come into this s**t saying, ‘yo, I want to be rich.’ I came into it saying I want people to respect what I do as a craft. It would be great to pay my bills off this s**t. I don’t need 14 cars, a mansion that I walk around and get bored in, hanging around a lot of people and most of the people are snakes. Be careful what you ask for. You see people who get fame and when muthf***as want a picture every five minutes they get mad. You asked for this life. Everywhere you go somebody’s following. This is fame. This is what you wanted. So don’t get mad when the media slanders you. This is what I mean by America. They throw curve balls and you come up and strike out.
RubyHornet: Back in ’04 I interviewed you, and the first question was about your name. And you told me about the book Bloods. About the Vietnamese relationship to the African American soldiers during Vietnam. You said you read the book at a time where you were in prison. You said, “At that time I was at war within myself as far as being in prison. I needed to change my life, but I was in negative surroundings so I did negative s**t when I really didnt want to do.” You talked to me about how you dealt with that within yourself. I’m wondering within the 5 years since that interview are you still at war or are you at peace?
Saigon: I’m glad you mentioned that. It’s the same when I said you have to play the game. I don’t want to play the game. But I’ve put myself so deep into this s**t as far as depending on this s**t to make a living. I could have had a Masters degree in the time that I spent locked up. I gave this s**t 17 years, so now this has to work for me. See, I wasn’t smart enough to play the game from the beginning. Now I’m wise enough to admit my wrong doing. I made so many bad mistakes from management to my approach. I didn’t have a execution plan. I was alone. I was just getting out of jail. All I had was the ability to write and communicate and express myself well. Now I feel like I’m in that same war, but I have an upper hand because I understand the war better. It’s so dope that you are bringing up these quotes because I still feel the same way. I don’t even remember it, but when you say something I’m like ‘that sounds like me’… A guy told me in prison that if you put a Playboy cover on the Bible all these muthaf***as would read it. You put a Hustler cover or a naked woman on the Koran there would be a lot more Muslims in jail. So they say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but I think you can. You may not be able to judge it in totality, but you pretty much know 90 percent of what the book is about. If I pick up a magazine or a book and there’s a woman spreading her pussy lips on it pardon my French, then I pretty much know that it is a sexual book. You have to be a fool not to know that you can judge a book by its cover. You can’t judge a book by its cover probably 2 percent of the time, but you can’t let figures of speech control how we live. I was trying to date a girl. I finally tried to get in a relationship with this girl, and this girl lived her whole life in figures of speech. Everything she said and lived by was figure of speech. I was like, ‘boo that’s a figure of speech that’s not real. ‘Well nothing happens that ain’t going to happen.’ I’m like, ‘no that’s not true. You’re just repeating someone’s philosophy. You have to make things happen. That’s like me just sitting in my house saying, ‘if it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen. If it’s meant to be it’s gonna happen.’ It’s like relationships, you have to put in the work in order for them to work. Americans, we live our lives by figures of speech, everything happens for a reason. Why in the ghetto do little kids get shot and bullets fly through their windows and in the suburbs that doesn’t happen? What’s the reason for that? That’s by design, that’s not a reason. Everything happens by design homie. Why if you go to Lebanon little kids learn how to shot machine guns? That’s by design. There’s so many little figures of speech that actually control the minds of American people.
RubyHornet: It’s always thought provoking to talk to you. Are there any last things that we should look from you? Warning Shots 2 came out October 6th…
Saigon: October 6th, I didn’t want to scare people off because there’s a lot of s**t on there that’s going to make people say, ‘hey Saigon is bugging’… I’m just playing the game. I don’t want to be the only person taking the game serious. I don’t want to be the sore loser crying and s**t. The only way you can be a sore loser is in a game. So now I realize that it’s a game so I gotta play. So if I lose it’s like, ‘f**k it. I’m not mad, life goes on. So it sucks when you put in integrity and really apply your life to this. It hurts when you lose because you don’t realize it’s a game.