HipHopDX previously reported on a personal blog that appeared on Saigon’s MySpace that was in regards to his Atlantic situation. Since then, Sai has taken the blog down and stated the reason was that it had offended Just Blaze.

Blaze has taken the time out to write up his own blog to discuss his insight on the whole situation.

”As far as Saigon’s infamous MySpace blog entry, and its subsequent removal, he stated that he took it down because It offended me and I didn’t understand why he would say what he said. That…. isn’t exactly the case.. it’s actually not at all. Don’t take that as me calling him a liar by any means. To me that means he was either too frustrated to really read it thoroughly (understandable) or.. well I can’t think of another reason. I have no vested interest in his feelings towards the label, I wasn’t even mentioned in his blog, so there was nothing for me to be offended about. To sum up what I said in my email to him, I explained that I didn’t understand why he would post that NOW. Now that the album is pretty much done, and the only issue holding up the release of the first record is a sample clearance issue, which Craig Kallman (President of Atlantic) is personally handling directly with the sample’s publishers, as well as the management of the group that was sampled. Please believe that does NOT happen very often, especially not with a new artist who has not sold one record. It’s usually "Well replay the sample or make a new record" If this man is going out of his way to personally get this cleared, and we (myself and Saigon) just had a short meeting about this the night before and you know exactly what is happening and who is working on what, why would you go out and slander the company  he runs in the middle of him trying to negotiate something on YOUR behalf? It’s kinda like going out and sleeping with your lawyer’s wife the night before he’s about to represent you for a murder case.  You’re asking to get buried. These are the people that once this record DOES get cleared, have to work, push, and market it. We don’t make pop/crunk/rock/dance/snap rap, so we already have an uphill battle.. let’s not make it more difficult for ourselves. I dont care what you personally think of the man, but now is not the time to go and kick up dirt when they are in the middle of working out something for us to finally release a record.  6 months ago? I would have understood completely, right now? Let them do what they are trying to do so we can wake up to some good news about the record being clear to release, as opposed to me being woken up at 9am because the president is pissed about your blog, when hes trying to clear your sample personally.  You may not be entirely wrong,  and I actually agree with a LOT of what you said.. but I feel now isnt the right time for it.”

So why are Saigon and Just Blaze just NOW clearing a sample for a record that was done supposedly 2 years ago?

“…the BEAT was created in LATE 2005, the song went thru a LOT of incarnations before it ended up in the current form ( a few months ago) . I can think of  4 different versions of the song just off the top of my head, different lyrics for each one. Now let’s put this in real perspective here: If you have recorded a song more than once, more than twice, more than three times. What does this mean? You think the song has potential, but something is missing, whether it’s the performance, the production, or a combination of both, something somewhere is missing.”

Blaze then goes further into the situation, speaking on the processes of clearing a sample from the industry side of things.

More questions arise; did Just Blaze eat up the budget? In which Just responds:

“Let me be clear here … there is not, and has never been, any budget whording on my end. Depending on what I’m working on, I charge anywhere between 50 to 80 thousand a beat. I’m not even charging half of my full rate here, I think it is in the area of 30? And that is for 6 songs produced by me. That’s all I’m contracted for … Oh wait, but I own Baseline Studios, where most of the album was recorded. I gotta be caking off that end then right? Wrong, people. We did a flat fee of something like 50 thousand for the studio for however long it took for the album to be recorded. Now you figure most commercial studios charge 2 grand a day. Let’s say I charged a discounted rate of $1,000. That would add up to be about 50 sessions? We’ve been recording what 2 years minimum? We’ve done way more than 25 sessions per year. How is the studio being paid now? Simple: It’s not. I’m paying out of my pocket for sessions now.”

Continuing on, Just expresses his thoughts on Atlantic.

For the full entry (or to just check out an amazing blog) please check out Just Blaze’s blog over at TheMegatronDon2.com.