Washington DC’s Damu the Fudgemunk releases a 7-inch called Faster Rhyme for Self. Get it at Redefinition Records.

Having kept a low profile of late, R&S have been championing forward-thinking electronica since the 1980s. With the revival of the label’s classic In Order to Dance compilation series, we’re happy to welcome them back.

The smorgasbord on offer in the first CD, which showcases the talent cultivated by the label over the last 18 months, should satisfy most appetites. But if the feast leaves you desperate for more, the second disc is filled with some sweet, unheard delights.

DJ’s familiar to R&S’ new breed will skip the main for the dessert to sample the exclusives and pick out some choice tracks to debut on the weekend. Most of the songs on this CD have a techno/old-school undercurrent and will sit nicely in the basement raves.

A select few harness a deeper atmosphere rendering them preferable to the solitary confinement of your bedroom for a more cinematic effect. Heads will no doubt bop to the industrial rhythms of Blawan’s ‘Shader’ and Untold’s nostalgic ‘U-29′, but it is the more alternative meddling that stands out. Bullion’s ‘Ralph’ is an intriguing addiction in its slightly off-kilter approach; the techniques employed very much what is on showcase in the first highlight CD.

And it is the first CD that underlines the eclecticism that shapes Renaat & Sabine’s outlook. Spearheaded by the likes of James Blake, Lone, Blawan, Untold, Pariah, and The Chain, the record label houses some of the most cutting edge and pioneering young talents of today whilst still drawing on the sounds of the pre-2000 rave culture. An introspective and intelligent approach to dub, minimal and electronic is on display here, each artist very much doing their own thing; their uniting element: a reminiscent approach to forward-thinking electronic music.

words Adam Finn

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Buy IOTDXI
R&S Records website

Since 2007, Evidence has been navigating the music industry as a solo artist. Beatnik caught up with an emcee at the top of his game ahead of his trip to London in November.

Rhymesayers European Tour. Just saying the words causes a little burst of lightning in the happy centres of our brains. What, you’re saying the coolest rap label in the continental US is coming to Europe? London included? Not just one of them, but all of them? On one night? You don’t say. And did our frontal lobes just explode? They did? Splendid. Won’t you help us pick up the pieces? Careful, they’re squishy.

We don’t mean to, er, gush, but the label has given us so many reasons to be fans – starting with the expertly-produced music of Atmosphere and going right through to the powerful raps of Brother Ali and Blueprint.

In fairness, not every Rhymesayers artist is on the tour bill – they have just under thirty artists on their roster, and that’d require one monster tour bus – but almost all the ones you’d expect are there. Atmosphere, Brother Ali, Grieves and Budo, Blueprint. And a man who, when he signed to the label in 2009, caused more than a few raised eyebrows.

The rapper in question is Evidence. The Dilated Peoples MC, born Michael Peretta, had been plying his boom-bap craft for years with his crew, and had recently dropped his superb debut album The Weatherman. Rhymesayers – with its reputation for introspective, complex, difficult rap music assembled in the freezing winters of Minneapolis – did not seem like an ideal fit for Ev’s sun-soaked Venice Beach verses.

The otherwise mellow Ev bristles when we ask him about whether anyone else regarded the signing as an odd move. He’s at his buddy Alchemist’s house when we call, watching Youtube clips, and he was very relaxed before we asked the question. “Why is it an odd move?” he growls. “What about [fellow roster-mates] MF Doom or Freeway? They don’t sound like Atmosphere or Brother Ali either, but they’ve both put out great records on Rhymesayers.”

For the record, while Doom was signed by the label in 2003, Freeway – formerly of Jay-Z’s Roc La Familia, and also a polar opposite of Rhymesayers’ steez – was signed a few months before Ev.

“But I think you’re right,” he sighs – either agreeing or simply deciding not to pursue the point. “There were a lot of people surprised, and with me having done the track ‘Line Of Scrimmage’ [with Atmosphere’s rapper and label frontman Slug] and having put out a press release saying that my new label was one that wasn’t based in LA or New York, people had been guessing it might be Rhymesayers.

“My whole thing is just, I think a great label is built on a diverse roster. I don’t believe that if you find one thing that hits and then you find a bunch of things that sound similar, or you throw thirty things against the wall, and one sticks, that’s [going to work]. I’m not into that. It’s the reason I love Tommy Boy or Def Jam. LL Cool J and Public Enemy didn’t sound the same, but they coexisted.”

However, we should say right now that we’ve eaten our words. While we may have doubted the signing at the time, his first album for the label shocked even us with how good it was. Cats & Dogs might not be as groundbreaking and slick as The Weatherman, but Ev is on top of his game. Clearly, we were a little bit wrong there. Sorry Ev.

Cats & Dogs has some truly outstanding tracks. Our particular favourite is ‘Late For the Sky’, which teams Ev with Slug and Aesop Rock to make a track about, er, running for a plane. It might be a strange subject, but damn, it’s dope. Stoopid dope. Apparently Brother Ali recorded a verse for it too, but was replaced in favour of Aes when Slug reckoned it would make for a more interesting combination of MC’s.

Ev, who has never performed the track live (Ev, Slug and Bro Ali on stage together in London this November – pretty please?) says the genesis of it lay with an old friend.

“Ethan Browne is the son of [singer] Jackson Browne, and he’s one of my best friends, and one of the people that made me start rapping. He’s been in and out of rehab a lot, dealing with his trials and tribulations and he came out, and I was having him over, playing music, and I had a beat from Sid Roams. No samples in it, but it really sounded great because of the way they chopped up the live instruments. I was like, let’s go through some of your dad’s stuff, let’s see what he’s got, and he’s like, he’s got this song where he says something like ‘late for the sky’. And I loved it, and although I didn’t sample the song I still [used it] to write the chorus.

“I sent it to Slug. I was in Amsterdam at the time, and he sent me back the verse and I played it…I tried to get Brother Ali on it, had him do a verse but Slug said, trust me on this one, we should put Aesop on it – it’ll be more interesting and raise eyebrows. Ironically, I was back in Europe, in Germany, when Aes sent his verse. It’s an international song.”

The guestlist on Cats & Dogs is, frankly, intimidating. And while some guests fall out of step (check Krondon on Well Runs Dry), others are perfect – Raekwon, Ras Kass, Termanology, Lil Fame and Aloe Blacc all have star turns. But it’s an indication of his growing confidence that Ev is never out of the spotlight. He dominates each track he gets on, and at the moment there’s not really anybody out there rapping quite like him.

Once he’s got touring out the way, Ev’s next big focus is on a new Dilated Peoples record. It’s been five years since the last one. “Are there going to be challenges? Yes,” he says. “But we haven’t gone anywhere. There hasn’t been a year where we haven’t toured, where we haven’t been chilling. And there hasn’t been a full album where we haven’t featured each other on it. There’s good synergy and energy as a unit. It is a little nerve-wracking and exciting and scary – a lot of capitalised, exclamation point emotions that come to mind when I think of that record. For that reason, it’s either gonna suck or it’s gonna be great! But it has the potential to be our best record, because of the intermission.”

The Rhymesayers collective are in the UK at The Electric Ballroom in London on 7 November 2011. We’ll be there. Come rock with us.

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Read our review of Cats & Dogs
Buy Cats & Dogs
Evidence on Twitter

A few years back, Los Angeles’ beat cosmonaut, Flying Lotus, decided to start a label that would channel his endless energies into a solidified movement. Lotus’ releases, particularly the pioneering Cosmogramma, are musical clashes of civilations. The artists on his label tend to follow suit, but mostly to a lesser degree. Lorn’s electronic beats do that FlyLo spazz from time to time, and Teebs refines the label founder’s more psychedelic moments—but nothing gets quite as schizophrenic as FlyLo’s work.

Then came Thundercat. His moniker might precipitate music steeped in recycled visual culture, but that isn’t really the case. The Golden Age of Apocalypse jitters between styles of music but maintains a sort of jazz and r&b foundation. But it jitters in a good way—probably thanks to Lotus’ involvement in the production of this record. He may just be the very reason for the medley, too.

No matter how unexpected, the shifts tend to fit—whether it’s acoustic soul or robotic ambience we’re talking about. The galactic funk streaks of ‘Daylight’ lean towards Dam-Funk, ‘Walkin” towards the better parts of Phonte and Nicolay as Foreign Exchange. Thundercat’s weapon of choice, the bass guitar, is prevalent throughout. Not least in that magnificent switch from trippy swing to a roaring break at the end of ‘It Really Doesn’t Matter to You’ before ‘Jamboree’, an instrumental funk number, kicks in.

Those twenty seconds epitomize the idea; Brainfeeder is about big thoughts—condensed into deliberate concepts, executed with full commitment. The Golden Age of Apocalypse is no different.

words Sven Hultberg Carlsson

Thundercat: It Really Doesn't Matter to You

Thundercat: Jamboree

——————

Buy The Golden Age of Apocalypse

You know what? We’ll eat our words. With a tasty dollop of humble pie. See, Rhymesayers aren’t one of the biggest independents on earth for nothing. They’re smart. So they let Evidence do what he wanted, with only a barely perceptible nudge here and there. And while Ev doesn’t quite top his brilliant solo debut The Weatherman LP, his Rhymesayers opening shot Cats & Dogs is a testament to what clever people with resources can do. It’s better than almost anything you’ll hear this year.

Ev himself is unchanged. His gorgeous, distinctive voice and powerful flow are in-the-pocket-perfect, and his quick-witted observations of life in California are still a joy to listen to. The album is a more complex beast than Weatherman; there’s more soul-searching (including a difficult incident with Kanye West in ‘I Don’t Need Love’), more cheeky metaphors and more wrestling with what it means to be a rap artist in the twenty-first century. But at its core, it’s still a rap album, and a damn good one at that.

Few albums go to such extraordinary lengths to please the listener. Raekwon and Ras Kass on one track? Prodigy and Roc Marciano? A tasteful collabo or two with Alchemist? All the old favourites like Sid Roams and DJ Revolution? And oh, almost as an afterthought: DJ Premier. He pops up on the track ‘You’, which is one of our favourites—along with the quirky Slug-and-Aesop-Rock-assisted Late For The Sky. Aesop even manages to behave himself, keeping his imagery Tourette’s syndrome to a minimum.

There is so little to criticise, and so much to love here, that we genuinely struggled to only give it four out of five. Such as it is, it’s not quite as complete or well-produced as Ev’s debut, so it’s not a perfect score. But this is an album you need to hear: it has power, skill, style and, dare we say it, a sense of whimsy.

words Rob Boffard

Evidence: You

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Evidence website

Bigger and better? Not in every case. In Canada, Beatnik found Classified, an emcee and producer creatively at ease with little outside pressure acting on him. And it sounds like it’s working.

Enfield, Nova Scotia is a textbook small town. A tiny dot on the map near the bigger city of Halifax, the town has a population of under 4000, and its most notable attractions are the winding Shubenacadie River and a hell of a lot of trees.

Luke Boyd lives here, fifteen minutes from the house he grew up in. Along with his wife and daughter, he’s made his home in a town where many of his family and friends still live. Every so often, Luke—a dirtbike enthusiast—will hop on his Kawasaki 750 Tyrex quad or his Suzuki RM250 bike, and go cruising the back roads around his home. “I usually use the Suzuki,” he says. “Two stroke. Nice and quick.”

And everyday, he’ll go to the little studio in his garage, boot up his computer, and make some seriously hardcore hip-hop music. Luke Boyd is Classified—a hero of the rugged Canadian hip-hop landscape. He’s never quite hit the levels that his countrymen Drake, Swollen Members and Kardinal Offishall have, but his steady dedication to his craft—both rapping and making beats—has paid off. And right now, he’s making the music of his life.

Take ‘That Ain’t Classy’, the lead single from his latest record Handshakes and Middle Fingers. It’s a monster, a track that grabs you and refuses to let go: a whirling tornado of buzzing synths, soaring strings and rumbling bass, matched with an insanely catchy hook and verses that showcase his powerful flow. It’s damn good hip-hop. It’s also the best piece of music to ever come out of Enfield.

“I’m still trying to get better, make more music, get it to more people,” says Classy. “I pressed up 500 copies of the first album, 1000 of the second, building. The last two albums have been really successful but at the same time I’m still trying to work on my flow, find better ways to make my beats and perfect my craft.”

In many ways, Classified is where every rapper on earth—or most of them, anyway—want to be. He is, as he says on album opener Ups and Downs, “making real cash flow off this shit.” And given the choice, most MCs wouldn’t go for the fast-living, mansion-buying life that Lil Wayne and 50 Cent live; if they could make a comfortable living without compromising their output, they’d do it in a heartbeat. Generalisation? Sure. But tell that Classified—fourteen projects deep, a legend in his home country, and living comfortably while getting paid to do something he loves.

“I’m 33 years old. I’m going to write from a 33-year-old perspective,” he says. “And I think hip-hop is growing up. I’m seeing people coming to my shows in their forties. The quicker we can realise that, the better and more rounded a culture we’ll have.”

But make no mistake: he might just be your average dirt-bik-ridin’ rapper, but he’s a big deal in Canada. He’s no Drake or Kardi, but he’s seen some serious success—including a massive hit with this song ‘Oh Canada’, which hit top 20 on the Canada Hot 100. Unfortunately, being so successful has its downsides: when Classified wanted to film a video for the patriotic single, he put out a call to get as many people to the shoot as possible. Unfortunately for him, some critics noted that there weren’t, in their eyes, enough black faces there.

“Message-board shit,” mutters Classy on being called racist. “I probably put more eyes on that topic than people actually knew. I’m a hip-hop fan, I go online and talk to people about it. It was just something someone brought up—I was like, what the fuck, are you serious? Stupid internet kids.

“I didn’t have people on the street coming up to me and calling me a racist, but I did have people coming up to me, going, what’s going on? We shot a video, I told everybody to come out. I’m not going to stop a video shoot because there’s not enough black people there. Too many white people! We need more black people! This is a rap video! People are people. Whoever comes out and supports, that’s love.”

There are challenges closer to home, too. He might not be facing your usual rap challenges—it comes with the mature territory—but when you make it a point to rap on and produce every single track on your album, it can often be difficult. As much as Classified enjoys the relaxed suburban existence (he lived in Halifax for a time before moving back), he does say that working alone can get a little lonely:

“It’s a gift and a curse. I’ve had some of my longest days in the studio by myself. I’ll sit in there and record it, produce it, engineer it. A lot of times that’s good, because I find that when you’re by yourself you can express yourself without being worried about what people in the studio think. It lets me focus on what I want to do. But it does get lonely and boring, being in the studio for a week at a time without seeing anybody.”

One of the things that he tackles on the new record is getting blunted. But—and brace yourself for a shock here—he’s talking about the bad side of it. To be fair, the song ‘High Maintenance’ does weigh up the pros and cons, but it’s certainly not something he shies away from.

“Weed impacts it quite a bit—good and bad,” he says. “Let me break it like this: I can’t write my lyrics high. It sends me left and right and I wake up the next morning and read what I wrote and it doesn’t make sense. But I can smoke something and zone out on a beat for three or four hours and play with one sample. When I’m not smoking and making a beat, I’ll chuck in a sample, play with it, ten minutes later I’m bored of it, move on. Smoking calms you down, makes you relax. Sometimes it makes me waste my time, but sometimes it makes me create some great stuff.”

Classified will be touring Europe soon. He is, he says, trying to negotiate a UK show. Here’s hoping he drives a bike onstage.

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Classified’s website

From the classic Colours, which heavily blended a love for jazz with drum n bass, we go back to this chilled beauty from Adam F.

Wait for the drop.

Samiyam went from being an online beatsmith operating out of Michigan to sharing a house with Flying Lotus in Los Angeles. Beatnik caught up with the gifted producer ahead of the release of Sam Baker’s Album last month.

‘Turtles,’ ‘No Dinner,’ ‘Where Am I?’; going only by the song titles on Samiyam’s debut album, you’d guess that video games, take-away food, and bedroom production still define his existence. And had it not been for MySpace—and a certain Flying Lotus soaking up like-minded talent into his movement like a sponge—you wouldn’t be far off.

“I never did any performances when I was living at home in Michigan,” Sam says about his early days knocking out hip-hop beats. “I was just in the bedroom making a bunch of music. I let some of my friends hear it and one of them convinced me to open a Myspace. That was pretty much [how it got started].”

After a trip to Los Angeles that resulted in Sam joining FlyLo for a show in Amsterdam—Sam’s first ever live performance—he decided to take the founder of Brainfeeder up on his offer to become roommates. A career move, sure, but FlyLo has recalled their first few months living together as dreams of ambitious musical output overcome by video gaming and weed smoking.

But after a few laps around the blogosphere, production credits as one half of FlyamSam (together with his new roommate), and many more live shows—this interview, for instance, took place shortly before Sam’s recent and thumping set at Le Belmont, Montreal—came the release of Sam Baker’s Album.

“A lot of the time I’ll just make shit. But for a while, over the past year or so, I have been making stuff and been conscious of wanting to put it on a record, a full length release,” Sam explains.

July’s release date completed a certain transition for him; going from assembling more or less disoriented beat tapes (which knocked nonetheless, we assure you) to putting together a cohesive lump of material for one specific project.

“The main thing that’s made it more difficult has been just feeling some pressure from people talking about it and wanting to know when the record is coming out. At this stage, my parents aren’t wondering when I’m going back to college, they’re more like, ‘Are you working on your stuff? When’s the record coming out?

“If anything has made my whole process different, it’s just that feeling that people are actually looking at what I’m doing now. Some screening has been added.”

And what does it sound like? Thumping. Bone-shattering boom-bap worthy of only your most expensive subwoofer. Except this isn’t just chopped soul samples, sharp snares, and deep bass; Sam—who forms a part of the electronic/bass music avant garde at Brainfeeder, remember?—has added his signature synths and live instrumentation to the beats. Cushion, the album’s midway-point, is illustrative.

“I want to get back to straight-forward hip-hop shit. That’s what brings me here, you know? I wouldn’t be talking to you right now if it wasn’t for all of the amazing hip-hop that I came up listening to through the 1990′s,” says Sam, who cites two of the culture’s most aggressive cats as examples of how he likes his hip-hop.

“MOP. I love those guys… a lot of East coast stuff is my kind of hip-hop. I guess I could relate mostly to their emotion and aggression. I don’t know too much about pulling people out of the driver’s side window of their car and taking their jewelry, or anything like that… but I could relate to the feeling of it.”

Sam’s live show makes two things clear: that he’s come a long way from that first gig in Amsterdam, and that his music, though steeped in forward-looking electronic influences, stems from the grittiest of hip-hop. At Le Belmont, Sam’s 45-minute set gets the whole room jumping and rowdy, as if this isn’t Montreal in 2010, but New York in 1993. His energetic mix, complete with sing-alongs to MOP-punchlines and Sam’s own music, is the best hip-hop show I can remember.

“When I first started making beats it was all samples because I wanted to be DJ Premier. I was obsessed with that kind of hip-hop. I just wanted to find three really dope pieces to chop out, get a heavy-ass kick and a snare; I wanted to make that shit. I guess it’s changed over the years, because the music that I’ve released isn’t exactly like that kind of hip-hop.

“I go back and forth. There’ll be a period where I’ll do nothing but using synths, playing my own keys and making my own chord progressions up. And then for a while I’ll just be on the records chopping shit up. And I’ll sample anything; crazy sounds from a movie or something.

“My favourite snare I ever used was the sound of a zombie having its head smashed. It was from an old Italian horror movie called Zombie. I was using the MPC so I didn’t have an effects board. You put a sound in there and you have a resonance and a low-pass filter. That track was lost on one of my old computers. It was a good, crisp sound.”

Rinse FM controller Alexander Nut hijacks the airwaves every Saturday with his ‘mixed nuts’ show. Broadcasting a diverse array of sounds, ranging from hip-hop, dubstep to soul; Alexander also co-runs Eglo records. He took a moment to check in with Beatnik to shine some insight into the label, and it’s function within the wider music marketplace.

Sam Shepherd (Floating Points) writing his PhD on “the neuroscience of pain.” How is the music put out by Eglo reflective of an intellectual appreciation of sound?

We don’t intellectualise things too much. I can’t deny that Sam’s interest in science somehow filters into his music. Ultimately, the academic subject matter is in his head, and that carves a method to his creative approach to making music. Sam is also a classically trained musician, with an extensive knowledge of jazz music. These aspects bleed into the sounds he creates in a big way.

As a selector for Rinse FM, what record labels inspire you personally?

Def Jam, Warp, and Stone’s Throw have always been inspirational.  There’s a raft of new labels too. Outlets like Lucky Me, and Clone have some cool stuff out at the moment. These labels function with a certain type of identity that extends beyond their artists.  There’s a bigger picture to their mission statement, and this really inspires me.

If there’s a creed behind Eglo, how can you interpret it in your words?

We all respect that there’s a connection between what each of the team does for the label, and their appreciation of certain types of musical frequencies. All of us at Eglo crossed paths out of the life choices we’ve made. Be it from doing Rinse FM, playing Plastic People, to hanging out at certain record stores. It’s a bit of Transformers dynamic in that respect!

When it comes to DIY labels, ‘Keeping it in the family’ can prove to be an effective working motto. With the likes of Funkineven and Shuanise on Eglo’s books, what acts would you like to have associated with your label?

We certainly have an extended family. People like Kyle Hall do a lot of material for us. The Nonsense Boys: the club night over at Plastic People, and the Deviation crew have strong ties with Eglo. Musically speaking, we appreciate where Mala’s coming from. Ultimately Eglo wants its own identity to ring out.

Label signing Fatima is breathing new life into soul music. Her record ‘Warm Eyes’ was produced by Dam Funk. How did this come about?

Fatima is a nomadic traveller. She goes around various countries doing her thing. And because her talent is sick, the interest around her spreads pretty quickly when she’s in town. She’s been listening to Dam Funk’s music for a long time. She contacted him, and the first time he came to the UK to play a gig he shouted her out, and they performed on stage together.

Both Fatima and yourself will be hosting sets with Ben UFO (Hessle Audio) at Neighbourhood #4 at Plastic People, Wednesday July 13^th. Which venues appeal best to Eglo’s artist stable?

There’s a club in Germany called Horst. We did an Eglo night there in Berlin. After Plastic People, that’s possibly my second favourite place on the planet to spin records. Horst has a similar vibe to Plastic People, and it’s a lot bigger. The sound system’s rigged in a different way and it sounds amazing!

The Internet age has led to a surge in self-run indie labels. How is Eglo making its mark in an industry that is more competitive than ever?

Our label has a hardcore contingency of fans that exists primarily through selling vinyl in record stores. We pride ourselves on establishing our artists off their own creative merit, without drumming up hype. This is what’s missing in the industry these days. We put out digital releases too, and there’s a genuine substance behind Eglo.

As a business, how many people make up Eglo’s workforce?

Basically Sam Shepherd and I run the label.  We have contributing artists and designers on board too. These are the people who make videos, and put together artwork for instance. We support the people around us, and pay them properly for running with us.  Our operation is very community based.

Key radio tastemakers like Giles Peterson, and Mary Anne Hobbs have touted Floating Points. How proactive was the label in enabling this?

We were extremely conscientious about this. The number one factor here is Sam’s music. No matter which label he’d have been signed to, eventually he was always going to get recognised. We were able to help one another because I already had All Young Kings Promotions set up then, before Eglo existed. I’ve been supporting his music since I’ve been with Rinse FM.

Can you give us an insight into future projects and releases?

The Eglo compilation is due for release. This is a double CD that has exclusive material on it. Expect new LP’s from Fatima, Funkineven and the new Floating Points album is going to be out sooner than you think. Our website is just about to go live, which will include our online store. We’ll have a digital video platform too. We also have a few special guests featuring on recordings that I’m not going to reveal…there’s a lot to expect from Eglo and its extended family!

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Eglo Records website

We were expecting a lot from our chat with Saigon. But the one thing we weren’t expecting to hear is that he has a new album dropping in less than a year’s time.

This is, after all, the rapper who had been promising fans his debut album, The Greatest Story Never Told, for nigh-on seven years. Indeed, the album only saw the light of day this year because Sai finally broke with his label Atlantic Records and released it elsewhere. Put simply, calling Saigon albums delayed is like saying that Lady Gaga is a bit of an exhibitionist.

So when the New York rapper tells us in his distinctive growl that he’s “shooting for January or February”, we have to admit we’re a bit sceptical. Actually, that’s not true. We think he’s telling outright porky pies.

“Getting this [current] album out took me a long time so now that it’s out there I can keep putting out new material,” he says. “[Producer] Just Blaze isn’t gonna do the whole thing this time, but he’ll do the majority of it, like the main records. I got some new producers I’m working with whose sound I really like.”

To be fair, most of the impediments to Saigon (born Brian Carenard) releasing his music have been shaken off. His stormy relationship with Atlantic, of which more in a moment, has come to an end. His partnership with Just Blaze is stronger than ever. And his new home, Suburban Noize, seem happy to let him do his thing. Just as well, because when TGSNT finally found release on the label, it bucked every trend imaginable. You’d think an album that had sat on a hard drive for years, that went through so many legal hurdles that Just eventually began leaking the tracks himself, would sound dated and dull. It wasn’t. Saigon’s debut is sodding brilliant.

It really is. Not only is it superbly produced, thanks to Just having a hand in almost every track, but it’s a tribute to the very concept of an album—the sequencing of the tracks allows them to be mixed into one another, like a full DJ set. And at the centre of it all, Saigon reminds you why he was so anticipated in the first place. He is one of few naturally gifted rappers on planet Earth; while his lyrics may sometimes seem a little simple, he has the freshest flow in the business. It’s on-point, razor-sharp, sick, whatever adjective you choose. This was worth the wait in every way.

“We had that album done in ’07!” Sai laughs. “It was getting a release date and putting it on the calendar that took so long. We added one song—Bring Me Down—and a bonus song, and one song we couldn’t get sample clearance for so it came off. But other than that it didn’t change.

“A lot of people counted me out,” he muses. “He can’t do it, he left Atlantic Records, he had his chance. I knew my reasons for leaving, but I didn’t have time to go explain to everyone why I wanted to leave. People get a misconception. I was like, no matter what people think, I’m a persevere and it’s gonna work.”

Throughout the entire conversation, the spectre of the Atlantic Records deal hangs heavy. Sai signed with them in 2004. He was fresh off a prison sentence (he’d spent time in the Eastern Correctional Facility in Napanoch, New York for assault) and had been making huge levels of noise across New York with that insanely tight flow. He and Just were already comfortable working together—although he says that back then it was just a “business relationship”—and he seemed poised to do some serious damage.

Now stop us if you’ve heard this before. Underground rapper makes noise, signs to major label, is forced to make music for the radio, fights with label, ends up on the shelf and locked into a contract he can do nothing with. That’s the story of Saigon at Atlantic. We hate to hit you with cliché, but frankly it’s that simple.

Sai spent six years with the label, fighting them every step of the way to let him make the music he wanted to make. Talking about it now, there’s still a lot of anger in his voice. “All [Atlantic] care about is the radio,” he says. “Hip-hop wasn’t born on the radio. Pop music is on the radio all day, and hip-hop don’t come from that. Hip-hop is more rebellious music. But they’re a record company, so they were you like, you need to go in there and make songs for the radio. I’m like, that ain’t what I do! Y’all ain’t gotta spend a ton of money on radio for me.

“Put me in the streets, spend less money and let me hit my target audience…We went in there with songs we wanted to go with, they didn’t want to go with it, and we were like, come on, this is what we want to do. It got to the point where it was a stalemate between me and Just Blaze and Atlantic Records.”

One particular incident stands out. “Once exec told me he would not put out my music if I used the word faggot. I wasn’t referring to a gay man or anything; where we grew up, faggot is a term for a weakling, a weak-ass punk. It’s not used for a gay man, I didn’t even use it in those terms. But even using the word in general, he was like, I won’t put it out. But I’m like, I say nigga on the album five hundred times and you don’t mind that? Then he goes, oh, you guys say that word all the time. You guys can use that one. I’m like, wow.”

While he may have a slightly strange conception of the homophobic term in questions, it’s still an illuminating episode. For the record, representatives for Atlantic had not responded to repeated requests for comment at the time of publication. Saigon declined to name the executive in question.

Locked into a bad deal, Saigon went off the rails in a very public way. In 2006, he was stabbed with a wine bottle outside a Manhattan diner, allegedly in a botched robbery. A year later, he would not only be arrested on weapons charges for carrying a knife in his car, but got into a very public fist-fight with Prodigy of Mobb Deep. Later that year, he would use his Myspace page to announce his retirement from rapping. Guess how that turned out.

But then in 2008, Atlantic abruptly released Saigon, with full ownership of his album. It would take three years for it to find a home and see release (“I’m a hustler. I know how to rub two nickels together,” laughs Saigon when asked how he’s supported himself all this time—lots of gigging, apparently).

Throughout it, Saigon’s long-term partner Just Blaze stuck by him. Their sessions at Just’s Baseline Studios in Manhattan are legendary, and one thing that’s abundantly clear is that there would be no Saigon—or at the very least, no TGSNT—without the producer. “Our relationship changed because we grew closer as friends,” says Sai. “It started off as business, but the closer we got, it became more about friendship rather than business. It’s hard to do business with your friend. I kind of approach it like he’s my brother. It’s not like, I got some money, give me a beat, it’s like, yo, when you get time, go check your MPC, see if you got a beat from like eight years ago that nobody bought. Let me get that. I like that old Just Blaze sound. Go look through the files, there might be one you forgot about!”

Unusually for rappers this troubled, it would seem that Saigon’s story has a happy ending. His album sold 11,000 copies in its first week, and he’s sold 40,000 to date. It’s a healthy number in the current climate, and it’s married to great reviews and general acclaim for his live show. Atlantic, meanwhile, has suffered—after Saigon left, they went through a very public spat with Lupe Fiasco over similar problems with commercial singles. Lupe’s new album Lasers sold well, but he made it very clear that he had serious problems with how the label was handling its roster.

Don’t place any bets on album number two just yet.

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