HipHopDX
previously reported on a personal blog that appeared on Saigon’s MySpace that was in regards to his Atlantic situation. Since then, Sai has taken the blog down and stated the reason was that it had
offended Just Blaze.
Blaze has taken
the time out to write up his own blog to discuss his insight on the whole
situation.
”As far as Saigon’s infamous MySpace blog entry, and its
subsequent removal, he stated that he took it down because It offended me and I
didn’t understand why he would say what he said. That…. isn’t exactly the
case.. it’s actually not at all. Don’t take that as me calling him a liar by
any means. To me that means he was either too frustrated to really read it thoroughly
(understandable) or.. well I can’t think of another reason. I have no vested interest
in his feelings towards the label, I wasn’t even mentioned in his blog, so
there was nothing for me to be offended about. To sum up what I said in my
email to him, I explained that I didn’t understand why he would post that NOW.
Now that the album is pretty much done, and the only issue holding up the
release of the first record is a sample clearance issue, which Craig Kallman
(President of Atlantic) is personally handling directly with the sample’s
publishers, as well as the management of the group that was sampled. Please
believe that does NOT happen very often, especially not with a new artist who
has not sold one record. It’s usually “Well replay the sample or make a new
record” If this man is going out of his way to personally get this
cleared, and we (myself and Saigon) just had
a short meeting about this the night before and you know exactly what is
happening and who is working on what, why would you go out and slander the
company he runs in the middle of him trying to negotiate something on
YOUR behalf? It’s kinda like going out and sleeping with your lawyer’s wife the
night before he’s about to represent you for a murder case. You’re asking
to get buried. These are the people that once this record DOES get cleared,
have to work, push, and market it. We don’t make pop/crunk/rock/dance/snap rap,
so we already have an uphill battle.. let’s not make it more difficult for
ourselves. I dont care what you personally think of the man, but now is not the
time to go and kick up dirt when they are in the middle of working out
something for us to finally release a record. 6 months ago? I would have
understood completely, right now? Let them do what they are trying to do so we
can wake up to some good news about the record being clear to release, as
opposed to me being woken up at 9am because the president is pissed about your
blog, when hes trying to clear your sample personally. You may not be
entirely wrong, and I actually agree with a LOT of what you said.. but I
feel now isnt the right time for it.”
So why are Saigon and Just Blaze
just NOW clearing a sample for a record that was done supposedly 2 years ago?
“…the BEAT was created in LATE 2005, the song went thru a LOT of
incarnations before it ended up in the current form ( a few months ago) . I can
think of 4 different versions of the song just off the top of my head,
different lyrics for each one. Now let’s put this in real perspective here: If
you have recorded a song more than once, more than twice, more than three
times. What does this mean? You think the song has potential, but something is missing,
whether it’s the performance, the production, or a combination of both,
something somewhere is missing.”
Blaze then goes
further into the situation, speaking on the processes of clearing a sample from
the industry side of things.
More questions arise; did Just Blaze eat up the budget? In which Just responds:
“Let me be clear here … there is not, and has never been, any
budget whording on my end. Depending on what I’m working on, I charge anywhere
between 50 to 80 thousand a beat. I’m not even charging half of my full rate
here, I think it is in the area of 30? And that is for 6 songs produced by me.
That’s all I’m contracted for … Oh wait, but I own Baseline Studios, where most
of the album was recorded. I gotta be caking off that end then right? Wrong,
people. We did a flat fee of something like 50 thousand for the studio for
however long it took for the album to be recorded. Now you figure most
commercial studios charge 2 grand a day. Let’s say I charged a discounted rate
of $1,000. That would add up to be about 50 sessions? We’ve been recording what
2 years minimum? We’ve done way more than 25 sessions per year. How is the
studio being paid now? Simple: It’s not. I’m paying out of my pocket for
sessions now.”
Continuing on, Just expresses his thoughts on Atlantic.
For the full entry (or to just check out an amazing blog) please check
out Just Blaze’s blog over at
TheMegatronDon2.com.
