Jay-Z Borrows The-Dream's 'Hook'

Mixtape Monday

Jay-Z told us the obvious: Just Blaze is to blame for him getting on the remix of Saigon's "Come on Baby."

"I met Saigon before," Jay said last week in L.A. "He's a cool guy as well. But Just Blaze ... that's his artist. So we had records and work like that. It's in-house.

"Big fan? Of Saigon? "Yeah, he's good," Jay added. "But I wouldn't have did it ... to be honest with you. I like Saigon. If I don't have a relationship with the artist, I'm not just doing it for the sake of doing it. If you look at my past record, I've done records because of relationship, not 'cause this guy's good or whatever."

One good guy Jay is feeling is an artist under his Def Jam label, The-Dream. Dream (a Fire Starter alumnus — told you so, haters) is smashing the game with his "Shawty Is a 10," in which he's feeling himself so much he proclaims he doesn't need a chorus on the song: "I don't need no hook for this sh--!" Jay took his non-chorus chorus for the American Gangster song "No Hook."

"I was working on this song and it just keeps going and I get down to how many bars the verse is, and I'm like, 'What's gonna be the hook for this?' " Jay remembered. "Then I was like, 'I don't need a hook for this.' That, of course, led me to the Dream song, and I was like, 'I'm just gonna take that.' "

"When he played all the records [off his album] and I heard that record and he's saying, 'I don't need no hook,' I was like, 'That's crazy,' " The-Dream gushed. "This is Jay saying this? It's a whole 'nother level of respect. It's crazy. I remember when Jay was playing it at the 40/40 club. Like, 'Y'all don't know nothing about this.' People was calling saying, 'Jay ran the song back six times.' " ...