I don’t have a budget.  Just Blaze ate up my budget.  So I can’t really go and work with other producers like Pharrell, Timbaland, and Kanye, ‘cause it’s not in my budget anymore.  So all I’m doing is sitting around, just waiting for something to fall out the sky.  We can’t clear the sample, fuck it, let’s move on.  I’m a artist, Just [Blaze] is a producer, let’s go in the studio and make a new record.  We could do that in one day.  But it never gets done.

Just Blaze is still very active.  He’s still working.  He’s still doing beats for other artists.  These dudes are still working with other artists, but when it comes to Saigon it’s like, “Uh…”  People get choked up.  

HHDX: So who is the boogeyman in this situation?
Saigon: I don’t know, man.  It’s like everybody is playing hide the stone.  The only person I really communicate with is G. Roberson.  He tells me the most, but I still never get to the bottom line.  

HHDX: When I called G. Roberson – I called around to different people to try to get comments earlier in the week – I was told he wasn’t in, and I was told that Hip-Hop doesn’t work there anymore, can you clarify the situation?
Saigon: Hop doesn’t like the way Atlantic is structured.  He feels like they don’t let artists be artists.  They want cookie cutter shit.  So he left.  He left as an A&R.  He left his position.  He had a high-level position.  And he’s the one who signed me.  So this really makes it even harder for me, when the person who signed you [leaves].  

HHDX: Have you talked to anybody else within the A&R department, or anyone else within the label recently?
Saigon: Nah, man.  A&R’s don’t listen.  A&R’s are not A&R’s anymore.  They’re pretty much just getting checks.  They just get a check.  They find something that’s getting a certain amount of spins, that’s a regional record that’s hot, and they say, “Hey, these guys are getting 500 spins over here, we should sign ‘em.” That’s all A&R’s do.  

There’s no artist and repertoire.  There’s no artist development.  Not that I even need that.  They just want that one catch phrase to run with.  “We want jingles,” that’s what they’re pretty much telling me.  They’re sitting around waiting for something that they’re never gonna get from me.  

So either put my album out, which everybody on my team is happy with, or let me go.  I know I can get another situation.  I’m not worried about that.  I’ll go to Koch.  I’ll go to Babygrande.  I don’t care.  I’m not in this game to try to be a billionaire and have a twenty-car garage.  That’s not why I rap.  A lot of niggas rap for that, but that’s not why I rap.  Money is not my motivation.  

Check out part two where Saigon addresses “the powers that be” by name and if possibly leaving Atlantic Records means never working with Just Blaze again…