Creation

Look Out, Saigon's Comin'

Here is an Artist at the mixtape stage of his career that has caught my attention.  I first took notice of Saigon’s flow on the show “Entourage” on HBO.  So after getting a taste of his flow on the show I did some research.  I downloaded his mixtape “Welcome to Saigon” off the internet.  I thought it was tight as “you know what!” 

So I kept a watchful eye out for more Saigon material, and later downloaded “Patiently Waiting,” and I wasn’t disappointed.  Saigon shoots straight from the hip with no cut cards and has the lyrical agility to back it up.  Unfortunately in today’s world of “micro-wave hip hop” you can’t say that about many artists. 

Most of the creativity has been strangled out of the game, leaving us with no-skilled one hit wonders, or dudes and broads that come out of some crew or click that was built on the strength of one artist that made a name for himself and now is “putting on” all his boys who sound just like him, whether they got skills or not…but that’s what they ‘pose to do, look out for their boys…but the industry, looking for the quick dollar, pushes these often weak joints, on the strength of that one successful name, which leaves a bad taste in the mouths of true hip-hop fans like me who miss the creativity and originality.

But Saigon isn’t one of these dudes.  Besides skills, he isn’t afraid to say what he thinks about the industry and anybody in it. There’s a line in the song Contraband where he asks “what was the worst Biggie line of all times?”  I love it, cause as much as I love Biggies music, the lines that Saigon mentions in Contraband have always disturbed me!  But that’s what I’m talking about, who else has said in a rhyme that one of the biggest Icons of rap said some questionable things in one of his rhymes!? Nobody. Even if Saigon didn’t have skills I would have to give him credit for saying that! 

All in all, Saigon is definitely somebody you should keep your hand up to your ear for…I see great thing ahead for cuz. In an interview he was asked what makes him so widely accepted when a lot of new-comers aren’t in the world of hip hop. He responded that it was because he built his situation from scratch (six years in the making), and that he is what he says he is, and not one of these artist who are “all of a sudden” gangsters that gets “put on” by their folks despite their lack of skills, like I mentioned earlier in this article.

“These cats who get down with a crew, your name gets out there faster, but it's like microwave food. A lot of these dudes don't even know who they are. They feel like they've got to be tough guys, they're not really tough, they've never been through nothing. You haven't been through shit, because New York is not that big. If you were that much of a tough guy, somebody knew you before you got your record deal. So when you come out here like, “I let the ratchet go bang bang! Bldatt!” Nigga, you're lying.

And people know when somebody's lying. Imagine if nobody believed that Young Jeezy ever sold drugs. Do you think he'd be as big as he is? People buy into that, they believe he was really pushing them birds. A lot of these so-called thugs, especially in New York, these gangsta rap thug rappers, nobody believes them. Nobody believes Jim Jones, nobody believes that.”

January 29, 2007