Everybody knows that we're fucked up in this country. We came here as fuckin' slaves, it's not a secret. They teach you that in school. Everyone knows the government is grimy. Everybody knows they killed the Indians off to take their land, they enslaved the Africans. We know who we're dealing with, so let's not try to keep reminding. We've got a problem, so come with a solution. What will we do to change this shit? Nobody hardly comes with that. They just keep drilling in your head that the government is fucked up, that there's police brutality. We know that shit already. “There's racial profiling.” Duh! We're in America.

A lot of times, people say, “You contradict yourself.” I'm a fuckin' human being, man! Being a human in itself is contradictory. You might wake up happy one day, and be like everything is good, and then the next day you're mad and ready to bust somebody's head. You're not the same way every damn day, no one's like that.

HipHopDX: A lot of artists who start off with the mixtape scene aren't widely accepted very much. But you were in TIME magazine, you're on the show Entourage, you're on a major label. What do you think it is that makes you so universally accepted?

Saigon: I think it's the fact that I paved my own way. A lot of these dudes pop up out of nowhere because they end up joining something that's already established. There's very seldom dudes who got in the game from their own merit. There's all these crews, and a nigga come joins a crew, and people automatically know who he is, instead of him starting from scratch. I started from scratch, and I built my brand up from day one by myself. I didn't have a Dipset to go get down with, I didn't have a G-Unit to latch onto. I didn't have a Roc-A-Fella to go get a chain and say, “I'm down with the Roc now.” I started my shit from scratch. It took me six and a half years to get where I'm at, but that's why I think I'm going to last longer.

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. That's why they hit grass selling real fast. Continued on page 6 »