About two or three years ago, had someone given me the opportunity to choose any two rappers to battle one another, it’s quite likely I would have picked Saigon and Joe Budden to exchange bars. Now that it’s actually happening, I’m glad I didn’t waste my picks.

These are two emcees who rank in the 99th percentile amongst their hip-hop peers in the creative writing category, but have struggled to find (or maintain) much commercial success in the hip-hop industry.

The pair have gone back and forth on four diss records recently, with little hope for resolution in sight.

As I understand the chain of events that brought about the situation, it went something like this:

1) Budden mentions Saigon in the context of a song.

2) Saigon interrupts Budden’s name check as a diss. Puts video on World Star Hip-Hop discussing various topics, one of which being his dislike for Mr.Budden.

3) Budden claims original song was misinterpreted by Saigon, proceeds to release a real diss track- leading to subsequent back and forth by both sides.

The reason this beef sucks because there’s no compelling back story. The catalyst behind this drama is hip-hop’s equivalent to a dirty look. It’s tough to believe there’s sincerity from either artist on any of the tracks they’re exchanging because we all know these two aren’t really pissed off at one another.

Today, hours after Saigon’s newest diss track became the star of every hip-hop blog, Budden released the video below- which is incredibly dull compared to many of Budden’s previous installments of JoeBuddenTV, but closes with a suggestion that fans should expect something to happen at an upcoming show. Ironically, Budden and the Slaughterhouse crew (Budden, Joell Ortiz, Royce the 5’9 and Crooked I) have a show tomorrow night at S.O.B’s in NYC.

And for those with short memories, don’t forget Saigon has a history with S.O.B’s as well.

Budden’s label, Amalgam Digital, has also arranged a live web stream of the show (all drama aside this should be worth watching for the talent) and it’s a safe bet that at least half the people in attendance will be bloggers who will provide a play by play of the evenings events.

Hopefully someone will do something stupid to really escalate this shit, making further installments much more interesting and surely delivering hip-hop another black eye.

And this folks is the most interesting thing that’s happening in hip-hop these days…