R.I.P. Saigon’s Career

Speaking of mixtape rappers who are having a tough week, the situation with Saigon and Atlantic Records provides and interesting glimpse into the inner workings of the music biz.

You'll recall that Saigon got all pissed and lashed out at his label the other day in a MySpace blog in which he threatened to leak his shit to the Internets himself if Atlantic doesn't get around to putting his shit out tout de suite.

To wit:

Thank God artist such as Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin (Atlantic artist) weren’t signed in this day in time. They would’ve never seen the light of day. Not to worry though, my fans WILL hear my entire album very soon whether they put it out or not. If they don’t I will and let y’all be the judge of if the music is GREAT or not.

Um, yeah.

Delusions of grandeur much, Saigon? No but really, Just Blaze had him take down the MySpace blog. But, fortunately for us all, the editors here at XXL copied and pasted it into the headlines section here, for posterity.

And people say this site is controlled by the TIs!

Threatening to leak your own album to the Internets is probably not the best idea in the world, in the sense that once his shit does eventually leak to the Internets, everyone's going to assume it was his fault. If anything, the label might leak it themselves and use it as an excuse to drop Saigon like a bad habit, not unlike what happened to Lil' Flip. In fact, wasn't that the same label? Hmm...

But, on the other hand, I suppose there could have been worse ways for Saigon to vent his frustration with the state of his career as of late. Like beating the shit out of his girlfriend with his car. At least in this case no girls got hurt!

At issue is the fact that Saigon has been signed to Atlantic for three years now and has yet to have an album released. Supposedly, the album was more or less finished six months into the deal, which means that it's been sitting there gathering dust. But that might not be such a bad thing artistically, since Just Blaze hasn't done anything that was really that good in about three years anyway.

As far as the album's commercial prospects are concerned... I mean, let's face it, there aren't any. And I'm sure that's why it's been sitting on the shelf for so long. Even if the shit really was the next Illmatic, I doubt very many people would buy it. A lot of people really liked that Lupe Fiasco album, and that shit bricked harder than American Airlines Flight 11 slamming into the World Trade Center.

To his credit, Saigon himself claims to not give a shit how many copies his album sells one way or the other. According to an interview he gave another one of these hip-hop sites recently, he just wants people to hear his shit, since he spent so much time and effort working on it. If only the music business actually worked that way.