Saigon Is Ready To Do "Hip-Hop His Way" [EXCLUSIVE]

Starting a record label is something that we’ve come to expect every MC worth their mic cord to do. Hell, along side a clothing line, liquor brand and an arrest record, it damn near comes in the first world rapper starter kit. While plenty of artists spend their whole career trying to get to the level where a major will let them live off their own name, that’s not quite the case for one Brian Carenard aka Saigon. Since his release from prison in 2000 (he served time for an assault charge), the Brooklyn native has done it all from landing Unsigned Hype in The Source Magazine to signing to super producer Just Blaze via Atlantic Records.

Despite releasing multiple mixtapes and singles with the likes of Swizz Beatz and Jay-Z,  push-backs and politics put his debut “The Greatest Story Never Told” in label limbo. So Saigon turned his hustle to television landing reoccurring roles on the HBO hit series “Entourage” and more recently “Love & Hip-Hop NY.”

After finally dropping “Greatest…” in 2011 and its sequel “Bread and Circuses” in 2012, Saigon is now launching his own label “Hip-Hop My Way” and website, HipHopMyWay.com. Saigon looks to develop a multi-tiered entertainment venture with powerhouse tech company CPXi and create the kinds of culture-positive records he’s always wanted to make. But is he ready to deal with the not so positive feedback from his stint on reality TV? TheUrbanDaily finds out.

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TUD: Lets jump right in and talk about this label situation.

Saigon: Yeah man, I’m doing something real, real special man. I’ve been just waiting for this opportunity pretty much my whole life. So I finally got it, finally in the drivers seat, you know? I’m calling the shots and things are looking up.

So what can the fans expect and look forward to from a Saigon run label?

And website. HipHopMyWay.com That’s another part, an offshoot of the label. We’ll be getting to that. You can look for authenticity man, we not trying to do what everybody else is out here doing. I think everybody else has gone so far left that they forgot all about right. So right now, we real right, we’re keeping it right. We’re keeping it to the true principles of Hip-Hop.  Like my man Black Thought said on “What They Do”; “they’ve been forsaken. It’s all bout contractual and about money making”? Nah, we right here. I mean, everybody wanna eat but this is more based on artistic expression, social commentary and you know, things our children need. You know? Going up against the BS that’s out there. The righteous used to be popular and mainstream. That’s what I want to get it back to, when KRS and P.E. and Poor Righteous Teachers and X-Clan, when they was at the forefront.  You had the clown rap, you had the other shit but party-time was secondary. First it was get your brain first and then party afterwards. Now it’s been reversed. Its party, party, party, party and whatever happens from there happens. Everybody likes to have a good time but you gotta handle business before you can be out there partying and shit like that. And at the same time, it gotta be dope music! Like, lets not just say it’s conscious… it’s hot! It’s good, good, good music that has something you can take from it besides drinking, smoking, f*cking and such. (Laughs)

So your label is meant to add on as opposed to take away. Correct?

Exactly… just to offer some balance, you know? The beauty of it is, we’re partnering with one of the biggest on-line advertising agencies in the world. So we’re gonna get a shot to get the music out there. It ain’t like we’re in a situation where there are excuses like “Oh, we can’t… they not f*cking with us because…” nah. We have our own platform, which is the Internet, and my business partner is pretty much in control with how you connect the consumers with the product virally. They’re the best at it so it’s a beautiful situation. And with music going digital, the timing is perfect. It’s just God, God is working. He knows I got a message to give out that’s positive and he’s working, he’s doing it for me.

How did this deal come about?

The CEO and Chairman of the company, my business partner. We’ve been friends for about 7, 8 years but never really did no business but we met while I was doing “Entourage” and became cool. I watched him grow his business. He always knew I wanted to do more than just be a rapper in the business but the timing wasn’t right. So when it came around for me to get out of all my contracts… cause I was stuck on Atlantic for 6 years, then I did little indie deals that weren’t right. So when I got out of all my contracts I had an idea for HipHopMyWay.com, which was the site and then the site grew into the label. And so we just decided to partner up and do both of them. Like I said, God is amazing.

What’s the plan to get the positive message back to the forefront to where it’s not just popular but also profitable for you as a business?

I think you gotta attack the fans cause the fans are the ones that make the bullsh*t work. Cause if they weren’t buying into the bullsh*t, people wouldn’t make it. So I think we gotta let them hold some responsibility as well cause it’s easy to point fingers at the artists and say “Yo, he’s making that bullsh*t!” but the artists is just playing supply and demand as along as the people want that dumb sh*t. So we gotta hold them responsible, like when are y’all gonna up y’all level of awareness and say “Hey, I won’t support that ignorance. I won’t condone that because we’re grown.” They try to market Hip-hop to children but there are a lot of adults I see feeding into the dumb sh*t. That’s why I can’t even really do nightclubs. I understand why a 21 year old would be in the club. But when I see kids 30 in the nightclub with the 21 year olds, I gotta question that. Where are your values? Where are your priorities at if you’re 35 years old and in the club three or four nights a week? Nas made a song called “2^nd Childhood” back in the day, and I think more and more of our people are stuck n their second or third childhood and we gotta just wake them up and make them realize that we are the examples for the youth. That we have to lead by example and whether we like it or not, we have that responsibility.

SO WHY DID HE DO REALITY TELEVISION IF HE’s PUSHING POSITIVITY?? CLICK TO READ ON…

As far as leading by example, there are going to be a bunch of fans that only know you from “Love & Hip-Hop…”

I know. That’s why I did it.

Oh word?

Yeah. You know this game very well man. I never had the opportunity to put out an album on a major label. So most of my high moments came from television… “Entourage,” “The White Rapper Show,” whatever was popular at the time TV wise. That’s how I knew to sustain my brand.  So when the opportunity came around to do love and Hip-Hop, I was against it at first but then I was like… this is another way or reinventing and branding myself to a new generation. Cause my peak in popularity, not only did it come from TV but it was seven years ago. If a kid is 18 years old watching “Love & Hip-Hop,” he was 11 years old back then. So he don’t know nothing about Saigon the MC. My way of trying to outsmart the system is to try and make it more so about single parenthood and black fathers because we’re always ridiculed for being absent. So I went up there with a female who I had irresponsible sex with and I really didn’t know her, but we have a child. So I went up there to show that, that’s not really an excuse for not being in your child’s life. It just kind of ended up going haywire cause she wanted to be Kim Kardashian. She wanted to go up there and be famous, as we see now, all over the Internet with sex scandals and all this shit she’s into. My purpose was to show that we can lead by example. That’s why if you watch the show, everything from me was about my son and making sure he was getting the best from life even though me and her were never together. But you know, it kinda went left once shorty start getting the cameras in her face. But it all worked out for me. Without that, we wouldn’t be here on this phone.

I know you want to lead by example, but do you think you set the best one during L&HH?

Oh it could have been much better, but this is the thing about reality TV. When you’re doing it with somebody else and their agenda is different than yours that can be a recipe for disaster. When you’re not yelling and screaming, you get less and less camera time. Once she figured that out, it became more about: “How do I get under this guys skin? How do I push his buttons? How do I start more arguments so we can get more camera time?” She stopped caring about the purpose of doing the show and more so about continuing to get the most camera time. And so that created something between us to where it didn’t work out. So yeah, it could have went a lot better but like I said, I can’t take back what happened but I don’t like people saying “Oh Saigon just here to bark on his baby moms.” Cause that ain’t even what I set out to do. I set out to show as a young back man, a lot of us do step up to the plate. And that’s why, after the show we did the “Ayanla Fix My Life” and I think everybody who watched “L&HH” should watch “Ayanla Fix My Life” and they will understand where that hostility comes from.

Let’s get back to the label. Have you signed anyone yet? When’s the first release? Give me some details.

I ain’t signed nobody… I mean aside from myself. But my first release is going to be this summer, probably July or August. Got a single going out called “Sinners Prayer” it’s me, Papoose and Omar Epps the actor… the guy from “House” the guy from “Juice.” He’s been rapping outta Brooklyn but you know, Hollywood did very well for him so that’s been his bread and butter but he always had bars so I reached out to him to get him on this single and we shot the video for it. So that’s just a warm-up to lead into the real single. That’s called “Nunya“ which is produced by DJ Premiere. I’m real happy with this project man. I’m looking for new artists man, I want HipHopMyWay.com to be what Unsigned Hype used to be.  Which is basically for artists who can’t get any burn because certain websites wont give them no shine cause they ain’t got their weight up. So this is the place you gon get your weight up at before you can get on AllHipHop, on HipHopDX or RapRadar. So it’s like a breeding ground for new artists and producers.  We do the news and all that but HipHopMyWay is really for guys like myself. They don’t want to have to cater to what’s going on to be heard. They can do Hip-Hop their way; they can do what they feel in their heart and still be showcased on a major scale.

But at the same time they gotta be nice right?

Gotta be nice, they have to be something that I would approve of. Cause a few guys slipped through the cracks… they bout to log in and see their profile has been deleted (Laughs)

And the first release is going to be your album, correct?

Yep, “Greatest Story Never Told, Chapter Three: The Troubled Times of Brian Carenard.” I think I connected every generation of Hip-Hop up to now on one album. I got some of the legends and some of the new legends on one project. A lot of times they’re on the same song. It’s gonna throw people off but they gonna be proud to see someone connect the different generations of our culture and make it make sense.

Can we get a few names?

It might be a little early for that for that… but I’ll give you a couple. Big Daddy Kane is on it, Kool G Rap is on it. I got Bishop Nehru I got Omar Epps, Papoose and production by DJ Premiere. It’s really a celebration man; it’s a celebration to me. I feel liberated. I feel like I can finally go in the studio and make music from my heart and when other people hear it and love it I know it’s gonna get a fair chance. But I know I made this whole album from my heart. And that’s all I ever wanted to do.

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