It’s sad that it’s come to this. It’s been almost 10 years since I first heard of Saigon. I covered his first vinyl single “Say Yes” back in 2001 for a now-defunct underground hip-hop website ran by a fat fuck with a Napoleonic complex and imaginary wife. It was also the year of the Jay-Z-Nas beef and a million subliminals, but there was something to Saigon that kept me intrigued. He had a certain intangible quality that made you wanna track down everything he’s ever done and cherish it. Back then I described him as “An artist whose whole style is throwback with a razor-sharp new millennium swagger.” Maybe it’s the rap nerd in us (me) that makes us (….me) compare all new rappers to those that came before. The desire to designate lineage, to determine who influenced who, and how. With Sai, he combined everything that was great about hip-hop to me: the street storytelling techniques of Kool G Rap, the intelligent lyricism of Nas, the intricate rhyme patterns of Rakim and the unbridled passion of 2Pac. To boot, he even had the undisputed credibility to speak about the lifestyle he vividly detailed in both sorrow and glorification.

In my own opinion, he was the most talented rapper to debut in the 00s. (more…)