Just under four years ago, Saigon finally released his debut album, its title having floated around for the better part of a decade prior. After being released from prison in 2000, he spent years building an early career as a mixtape upstart before enduring an agonizing six-year span on Atlantic without a release. At the same time that Sai appeared as a recurrent, television-ready version of himself on Entourage, the label shelved his debut, The Greatest Story Never Told, before letting him loose in 2010. The next year, Saigon released the album and proved to himself as much as fans that he could transcend mixtape inclinations and his own title’s self-prophecy with a well-formed and reduced budget debut. The album also seemed like Saigon’s first chance at taking his next steps forward with Hip Hop, but then he sequelized the record to lesser effect the following year, signed up for Love & Hip Hop the next, and stepped away from the reality show earlier in 2014.
Like parts of the release itself, the album artwork on this third iteration of Saigon’s GSNT series immediately looks back. Saigon stands in front of an old-timey newspaper backdrop with a real article written in the Village Voice in 2011 propped prominently above his right shoulder. Separate headlines on the paper include Saigon’s other career-defining newsmakers: his arrest and subsequent jail time and a stabbing incident in 2006 in which two assailants tried to snatch his chain. Here though, Saigon looks up and away even though his jailing and uphill industry battles seem to perpetually frame parts of his music.
The major gripe begins early and continues throughout with an inconsistent beat selection. Saigon seems bent on skirting any obviously modern Hip Hop trendiness with the music but also fails to settle into a groove almost anywhere. The first song sounds like an attempt at arena Rap for the emcee’s dramatic grand entrance, but it’s so far removed from the record’s best moments that it’s an odd first choice. The album’s first rapped lyrics also frame the type of conversations Saigon wants to have without proving that he’s ready to actually dive in: “I heard we ‘bout to send the Navy out to Syria / And niggas yappin’ ‘bout some Maybach interior,” he raps. He never circles back, and instead laments that Tupac is gone and questions the rappers who drop his name. (Saigon raps about Tupac at least once more later as well, comparing him to Malcolm X with drums underneath before presenting himself as a figurative third coming.)
Either way, the Yardfather lays out some of the most positivity-charged music of his career as well. “Best Mistake” was the record’s initial single and proof that the emcee is at a different stage in life. Still, lines like “This is like a Scandal minus the Kerry Washington / Hard for me to breathe, it’s takin my very oxygen” are clunky and frustratingly characteristic. Later he starts a verse with the following: “If I was a mistake and you was a mistake? Then how can two mistakes create something so great?”
AD LOADING...
Still, there are obvious highlights and when Saigon loosens up and drops the pretense he churns out his strongest moments. “Sinner’s Prayer” is a reminder that he and Papoose are cut from the same cloth while the prospect of an Omar Epps verse might raise eyebrows more than perk up ears. Later, on “Mechanical Animals,” Memphis Bleek manages to jump start one of the record’s freshest moments, the remnants of his Roc-A-Fella heydays still bubbling up in his flow.
With 17 tracks, one of which is an interlude and two more of which are built from spoken word performances by prison activist Bryonn Bain, the tracklist is jam packed. The middle of the album in particular though is sequenced clumsily, a string of four consecutive Clev Trev produced tracks lead into a bundle of three DJ Premier songs with a jarring transition as a side-effect. Premo’s tracks adhere to his late-career standards, somehow both a caricature and shell of his former sound’s glory. But to both the producer and Saigon’s credit, the songs spice up the album and Sai sounds more pleasantly straight up here than elsewhere.
While he’s developed himself into a recognizable Hip Hop pundit outside of his music, Saigon has struggled to maintain his voice inside of it. There’s consolation in the fact that he’s still a talented emcee, but he’s tried too much while staying safe at the same time. Saigon fans will find plenty to pick through on GSNT3 but they may be the most alienated listeners as well, more aware than anyone that he is capable of better.
