“Mark Ronson pretty much taught me how to record. How to write bars. When I got outta prison he was the first producer I ever ever worked with. He was still heavy into DJin’, learnin’ his way around the studio. He knew a little bit about producin’ and workin’ with artists. I was the first or second rapper he ever worked with. The studio was right in his bedroom on 34th street. He said ‘One day I’mma start a label Sai, one day I’mma start a label.’ He was busy, but would still bring me to parties. I used to carry his records. Again just like Just, Mark is like my brother. Its ironic cause Mark is jewish but I would go to his house for Christmas dinner.”

ON THE ROLE OF RAP IN PRISON:

“Bein’ in a maximum security prison around kids my age that got 45 years to life – you don’t see how real that is until you’re close to it. There’s kids in there, sixteen-seventeen, and they in there until the sun burn out. You gotta think of something to do, so we used to rap. It was a hobby I picked up to kill time… I started battlin’ in prison. That’s how I got the name Yardfather. The recreation yard is everything, its society. That’s where everybody interacts with each other.”

ON THE CHARITABLE ORGANIZATION (IN ARMS REACH/ABANDONED NATION) SAIGON FOUNDED AFTER HIS BID:

“I got the idea from when I came home, and a lot of the friends I left in there we like ‘Yo can you stop by my crib and talk to my little man? He’s gettin’ in trouble at school, la la la, let him know how real it is.’ So I’d go and give these kids twenty dollas and take ‘em to the park or somethin’ like that. If I do this on a large scale, it could be very beneficial. I noticed off just doin’ it for three of my homies. I found a lawyer, he was tellin’ me about non-profits and how to start it up. Then I went to Russell Simmons party one day. The Christmas party he does every year. There was a dude in a wheelchair, his name was Terence Stevens, he said I heard about what you’re doin’ with your foundation – I do the same thing. He told me come down to City College and check it out. His organization was running full fledged. Classrooms full of kids whose parents have all been incarcerated. There’s like 30 kids in here. This is exactly what I’m doin, man. I started going over there every day and learnin’ from them. After that he was like lets merge ‘em. ‘You use the rap, I’ll do what I do and we’ll put them together.’ Now we got Fat Joe, Trey Songz, Carl Banks – so many celebrities supporting the program that its blown up. The more I do with the music, the more I’m gonna put it out there. To see them kids go from getting D’s to A’s you know you’re being effective. He’s on the honor roll next semester, and its like wow he’s not really dumb, he just wasn’t applying himself.”

ON HOW THIS FOUNDATION HAS CHANGED HIS MUSIC:

“When you hear my album you’ll see how I tie it all together. There’s not one gangsta song on my album. There’s a lot of that on the mixtapes because a lot of those were old rhymes I wrote in prison. When I was still in that mind state. Now I see the power of music and the influence artists have. I couldn’t go in the studio and make a song like that no more. My conscience won’t let me do it. In all reality nothing good comes out of gangbangin’ or drug dealin’. Nothin’. I never met a street level drug dealer that went on to be successful and retired. I never met a gangbanger laid up happy, with a pension. Never in my life. Even basketball playin’, or bein’ Jay-Z or the next 50 Cent. I tell the kids you got a way better chance bein’ a doctor or a lawyer than a rapstar. And they don’t believe that. We were poor my whole life, my mother was in the most rundown place ever. One day my little brother walks in the house and he got these Kevin Garnett-sized earrings on. R Kelly joints. Big, diamond earrings. If they were real they woulda cost at least a quarter-million dollars. I’m like the purpose of wearin’ fake jewelry is to make people believe it might be real. So if you had the money to afford those earrings, you wouldn’t be livin’ in this house. He gives me the smirk – whateva. And I know he’s gettin’ that from the rap videos. I’m like look at how influential this is on my little brother, I’m schoolin’ him every day talkin’ about how fake most of these gangsta rappers are, but their influence is stronger than me and he knows what I’ve been through. Rappers are raising our kids. Rappers replaced the black father. Sad but true. You know how many young kids I know that think its cool to sleep wit’ as many girls as possible? I’m like AIDS is out there, are y’all crazy? But no its like ‘I’m a pimp, I got this many chicks duh-duh-duh-duh-dah.’ Rappers don’t emphasize safe sex; they emphasize butt-naked women in they videos. Seein’ stuff like that made me feel like if I’m gonna do this, I gotta be responsible. I can’t send kids to prison, can’t do it.”

ON THE IMPORTANCE OF LYRICAL VALUE IN CONTEMPORARY HIP-HOP:

“There’s a lot of buffoonery that these labels support. Kanye is an enigma, what Kanye did was he did it himself. They wasn’t gung-ho about pushing Kanye so he showed them people wanted that music. Through the Wire, the videos, he did all that himself. Once they seen people taking to it, then they started to get behind him. The same people who signed me were the ones who believed in Kanye. I’m going through the same thing with the record companies that Kanye went through. That’s a lot of work to do on your own even with Just Blaze there. The label is like ‘we need a ringtone.’ I don’t make songs so that when your phone rings people can hear it. What’s the purpose of that? They only sell you the hook to the song.”

ON HIS BLOG DRAMA (ANNOUNCING RETIREMENT, CRITICIZING HIS LABEL AND JUST BLAZE ETC.):

“You know I didn’t even realize, but there is so much stuff I wanna put on a blog. It’s crazy how much people pay attention to it. I post it, ding, it’s all over the world. So the situation with Atlantic (Records), I don’t have much bad to say or much good to say. I went up there the other day and they got a picture of every artist signed to the label. Except Saigon. And it’s like some of the employees don’t even know who I am. They lookin’ at me like ‘can you get me some coffee?’. Like I’m an intern or somethin’.”

ON HIS RE-OCCURING ROLE ON HBOs ENTOURAGE:

“That was a great group of guys. I got a chance to meet Mark Wahlberg and I respect his work on the actin’ tip. He’s cool as a fan. The experience was easy because I played myself. Being on such a big production was fun, got my feet wet in the acting world and since then I’ve been looking at scripts. It introduced me to an audience I would have never captured on a mixtape level. Now 55-year old white women see me and go ‘SAIGON, I LOVE YOU.’ It made my name bigger than my music. People that never heard one song from me are like ‘Saigon? The rapper from Entourage?’ It helped considering how long it took to make this album. I did the show starting second season, no one knew it was gonna be big, they only had eight episodes. I was in seasons two and three and that’s when the show got live. I was talkin’ to Rob White so I may be in season five. Once this strike is over I’ll know what’s up.”

ON HIS FIRST TRIP TO SEATTLE:

“I’ve hit most major cities already, but never been to Seattle. I’ve never even been in that state. So I’m lookin forward to not only performing but seeing that big needle. That’s there right? Wanna see that real bad, reminds me of the Jetsons or somethin’. I’m sure Seattle has real hip-hoppers out there cause they been hittin’ me on the myspace like ‘we can’t wait.’ The only thing I dread is the plane ride. I hate those jet planes.”

ON HIS ALBUM RELEASE DATE AND ALL THE “PUSH-BACKS”:

“It just got done. I always hear ‘yo, Saigon’s album got pushed back again.’ I never was on a calendar. I didn’t have a completed album. We just now finished mastering. Now there’s a new single we bout to push, we towards April/May realistically. Just Blaze in the studio is just a beast, there’s a lot of live instrumentation its not just a sample with drums. There was 32-piece orchestras in there at times. From ‘01 when I really hit the mixtape scene until now you know how many guys I seen get hot, then cool all the way off and nobody cares about him no more?”

ON STUDIO TIME WITH JAY-Z:

“Bein’ in the same room as Jay-Z feels different. ‘Oh snap, that’s Jay-Z you know?’. I got tongue-tied. He’s the most soft-spoken person. He’s humble. One day I was in a small room with him and Beyonce. You know how overwhelming that is? She’s in regular clothes, sweatpants, ponytail, no lights cameras just a regular girl. That rain man thing he talks about, when a beat comes on… The ‘Come On Baby’ beat is a hard beat to rap to. I remembered so many people tried to rap to that beat and can’t rap to it. I took me three weeks to get my first verse to that song because it’s so tricky. But he goes in and hears the beat; I leave to go to a Dead Prez show. I leave the studio, and their performance must’ve been about half an hour. I come right back and his verse is done. I’m like nah, this can’t be. He just starts nodding his head, then goes in the booth. It almost don’t make sense, because the rhyme was so perfect. How did he think of something so intricate and elaborate so fast?”