You get the idea that the real reason Saigon is retiring from rap music (or at least threatening to) is that he realizes he has no future in it anyway. Even on the Internets, where you'd expect an artist like that to be somewhat popular, people only seemed kinda interested in The Greatest Story Never Told.

As I mentioned here the other day, I ran a poll on my own site last week in which I pitted it against upcoming albums by the Wu-Tang Clan, Ghostface Killah, Nas, and Lil Wayne to see which was the most anticipated. The Saigon album came in dead last, quite a few votes behind Ghostface, who was competing with his own (fucking legendary) group.

Now, no one's suggesting that Saigon, who's only released a few mixtapes to date in his career, should be as popular as any of those groups (ok, getting blown by a tranny hooker should be more popular than Lil' Wayne), but you have to look at these things in perspective. In an age when many are suggesting that the Wu-Tang Clan won't shift more than 100,000 units its first week (I think they'll do better than that), this Saigon album is just a monumental loss waiting to happen.

Which is probably why the album has since been pushed back from a Dec. 4th release date until... I'm not even sure when that shit's supposed to be coming out. (In fact, in a video interview with OnSmash,com which was posted here yesterday, Saigon wasn't even sure himself.) With as many prominent rap albums that are supposed to be released next month, I doubt he'd stand a chance. Never mind the fact that its single, which has grown on me a bit, has been out for a few months now, or that the video for it was released not too long ago.

Granted, I don't doubt that Saigon has grown tired of having to go around beating the shit out of people because he doesn't like what they said about him on the Internets, but come on. If there's a dollar to be made, there's a dollar to be made, personal turmoil notwithstanding. I mean, of all of the groups of people I could possibly write for, the assholes who "read" this website have rank right down there near the bottom, but you don't see me retiring from my career of flinging ad hominems at people over the Internets. Why not take some money for some shit you'd probably be doing for free anyway?

And obviously part of the problem is that Saigon feels the best way to solve his various problems is to go around beating the shit out of people. Perhaps more so than anyone in hip-hop (except for that guy who ate a woman), Saigon strikes me as genuinely batshit. Listen to that interview he did with that Lipstick show on Sirius and tell me there wasn't a genuine sense of fear that he might actually beat up a girl, live on the radio. This must be what Jay Smooth was talking about when he did that video about black kids who really are smart (really), but do stupid shit because they suffer from emotional issues.

Of course I'd suggest that the fact that they do stupid shit is evidence that they are, in fact, stupid. But you guys know I'm racist like that. As far as I'm concerned, stupid is as stupid does.

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