S. Samuel
After Saigon recently revealed Jay-Z had first choosing over past beats he planned to rap on, SOHH hit up the "Yard Father" to find out what Hov track he would most want if the tables were turned.
Considering Jay’s extensive 15-year catalogue, Sai said he would have loved to own “Can I Live” from Jay’s 1996 debut, Reasonable Doubt.
“If I could have had one of Jay-Z’s beats, it probably would have been ‘Can I Live,'” Sai told SOHH when asked what Jay song he wish he could have had before him. “I would make the song an anthem. In order for me to make it sound triumphant, I would probably make it like an anthem for black people. Like, ‘Wake up and get out the hood.’ Even if I could keep the chorus and have it say, ‘Can I Live,’ it would be like, can we live as black people? Can we dream? We built this country with blood, sweat and tears. From entertainment and sports to jewelry to plaques, to ‘Can We Live?’ Why are we still in ghettos, going to jail and still messed up? What’s up?” (SOHH)
Last month, Sai revealed how common it was to lose out on beats to Jay-Z.
“Jay-Z was jacking for beats baby,” Sai revealed in an interview. “We were working at Baseline [Studios] and we’re like a close family. Jay would come around, pop up every now and again and me and Just [Blaze] were in there working hard. Just would give me a gang of beats at a time and every now and again one would come up missing. One I’d write to or really loved then the next thing you know, there’d be a big meeting and they’d say, ‘Sai, we need to talk to you. You know that beat we had? The one you were loving? Yeah, big homie’s got that now.’ And you know big homie’s Jay-Z. He did that to me about three or four times. ‘Kingdom Come’ was mine. Actually, two didn’t make his album.” (The Urban Daily)
Sai also revealed how he managed to get a free verse from Young Hov.
“‘Come On Baby’ was mine, he took it, did his thing to it and then gave it back because he didn’t want to use it. So he gave it back to me but was like, ‘You can keep the verse I left on there.’ So I was like cool, you know what I mean? That was a big homie move because you can’t buy a Jay-Z verse. You can’t go to Jay-Z and say, ‘Hey, we got a hundred thousand for you to get on the record.’ He’d wipe his a** with a hundred thousand dollars. That’s why he said that line, ‘You wanna be in the public, send your budget,’ that means your whole recording budget. That means if you get him, there’s no money for producers, studio time, nothing. Send your budget.” (The Urban Daily)
Sai also recently told SOHH Jay will be featured on his upcoming Greatest Story Never Told solo album.
“There’s an updated tracklisting that’s about to go out,” Sai promised SOHH in an interview last week. “Like, Bun B‘s on it, Black Thought‘s on it, [Jay-Z’s] still on it but we had to go through our rounds and see what’s up. We’re really on some last minute grind sh*t. Black Thought. Jay-Z. Bun B. Layzie Bone. I look at the tracklisting now though and this is the best album ever. We got 18 records on it. It’s the best sh*t ever.” (SOHH)
Saigon’s Greatest Story Never Told is scheduled to drop Tuesday, February 15th.
Check out “Can I Live” below:
