Here's the results of a quick chat I had with Saigon back in October at the Power Summit. If some of the questions are random, it's because I was doing different things for different mags, get me!
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Who are you and why are you here?
I’m Saigon, an artist on Atlantic records and I’m here to promote hip hop and promote myself – play my part.
How old are you?
27.
What do you do?
I'm an MC, artist, poet and activist.
Where you from?
New York City.
What are you wearing?
Fatigue Footlocker T shirt cos we’re ready for war. And Air Force 1s, real basic.
What gives the Summit its power?
The music. It’s all about hip hop.
Do you have the Power?
Yeah, cos I got the music.
Without DJ’s what would hip hop be…?
It would be fucked up cos there would be no one to play it. But it would still be there, just not on a major scale. It would still be on the streets.
Who are your Top 3 powers movers in the hip hop game right now?
Unfortunately, now it’s the record labels who have got all the power. I think the artist should have more power, but we get the peanuts of the plate. But I look at it like it’s my voice getting out there and it will touch the people – so it’s more than money to me.
Who do you think will be Next To Blow?
I don’t know cos there is a lot of artists regionally doing their thing. But the next effective artist who’s going to mean something? Saigon. By far.
Tell us about Saigon and the Abandoned Nation movement?
The name of my album coming is The Greatest Story Never Told and I promise it’s coming by the end of the year. Just Blaze has been cooking up something marvellous so you won’t be too mad at the wait.
Who is Saigon?
Saigon is a man who grew up wealthy but came from a poor family; who made some bad decisions early in his life and got incarcerated. A big portion of my life was taken away from me cos of some of the stupid decisions I made, so now I’m hear to guide people away from the decisions that I made.
It seems, lyrically at least, there's a struggle between the street side of Saigon and a more conscious MC - so which are you?
Saigon is... conscious…That’s just who I am. I grew up in prison; I’ve lived the thug life, I’ve been raised by thugs, gangstas raised me. That’s also the same people who told me that being a gangsta isn’t cool and that I need to go on and teach the kids coming under us that that’s not the way to live. A lot of people come home from prison and make it seem like it (prison) is a cool place to be - but the people inside there, we don’t want our kids to go through that. I feel like it’s only right that I come through and show that there’s more to life than being a gangsta and a thug.
Tell me about the concept behing The Letter P track.
The Letter P, patrolling? What I mean is they’re paroling my peoples and I’m cheering for them cos we got to make something out of this. Children are the future.
Beauty is…
when you find something that you love and respect.
Home is…
the place where you find peace of mind and peace with yourself.
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Check out the Ridonkulous DJ Drama/ Gangsta Grillz mixtape at mixtapekings.com or a good market stall near you now. New shit, old shit and good shit (minus the new homophobic angle he's suddenly gone on and one that has majorly lost points with me as I've previously mentioned) There's also been some great post-stabbing-in-the-head interviews on allhiphop.com and hiphopgame.com.
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